Chinese travel further to foreign nations in holiday
( 2003-10-08 09:41) (people.com)
China Telecom employee Du Lan
and her friends planned for a holiday in South Africa, while Citic Company
employee Liu Tao and his newly-wed planned for a honeymoon in Maldives in the
National Day vacation.
Like Du and Liu, more and more Chinese tourists preferred to travel abroad.
During the week-long vacation, Chinese tourists were seen everywhere in airports
and railway stations.
Sources from national travel agencies indicated that during theweek-long
vacation, long-distance routes were favored by more Chinese tourists, such as
Australia, New Zealand, South Africa andGermany, while traditional routes such
as Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia gained less popularity compared with years
before.
"Before, Chinese travelers normally choose short distance tripsabroad. On one
hand, a trip to these destinations are comparatively cheap. On the other hand,
only these nations have been approved by the Chinese government to allow private
trips. Inrecent years, things are quite different, everyone preferred to travel
longer," said Wen Qian, an official with the Guangzhou travel agency.
World tourism nations with famous sceneries regarded China as an important
source of tourists. They come to China to tell the Chinese what they can see in
their respective countries. Switzerland, Japan, Germany, Austria and France and
other nations also promoted their scenic spots in China.
Meanwhile, as China speeded up the pace of opening up, Chinese tourists have
traveled almost all around the world.
According to the prediction from the World Tourism Organization,China will
become the fourth tourist source nation by 2020. The overall annual travel
expenditure of Chinese people surpassed 20 billion US dollars, according to the
latest statistics.
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