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E-Commerce Gets Involved in Tourism Industry
Travel agencies in China have shown great interest in cooperating with tourist network providers. Currently, more than 300 networks catering to tourism have been set up in China with millions of registered members.
The first tourist network was opened by Qiu Bojun, president of the Beijing-based software company Kingsoft, after he experienced frustration in finding a suitable hotel during a business tour. To date, the website, www.xoyo.com., has 20,000 members and 2,000 institutional members who can make bookings and reservations for 1, 000 major hotels in 100 Chinese cities.
"The Internet has built a bridge between tourists and travel agencies," Qiu said.
The emergence of E-travel services will bring about a fundamental change to tourism as we know it, he added. China has 70 million Internet users, 70 percent of which have travel plans and can afford domestic and even overseas trips.
WWW. Chinagc. com, a E-travel agency, has 120,000 surfers a day. The network president Shen Dongshu expects its annual business turnover to be 10 billion yuan in three to five years.
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