Chinese tourists made a total of 57.39 million outbound trips in 2010, up 20.4 percent on the previous year, China's tourism authorities said on Tuesday.

Inbound trips made by overseas tourists to the mainland hit 134 million last year, up 5.8 percent, said Shao Qiwei, chairman of China's National Tourism Administration (NTA), at a national tourism work conference.

Domestic trips made by Chinese tourists topped 2.1 billion, up 10.6 percent from 2009, he said.

Revenue generated from tourism totaled 1.57 trillion yuan (238.48 billion U.S. dollars) in 2010, an increase of 21.7 percent from the previous year. Revenue generated from overseas tourists came to 45.8 billion U.S. dollars, up 15.5 percent year on year, Shao said.

China's tourism sector has grown quickly over the past five years, with revenue increasing 15 percent each year on average, he said.

About 13.5 million people are working in the tourism sector and tourism related spending is over 10 percent of total public consumption, according to Shao.

China is Asia's largest source of outbound tourists and the country ranks fourth in the number of overseas tourists it receives following France, Spain and America.

In the next five years, China will look to further regulate the sector, promote green tourism and make traveling more affordable, Shao said.

By 2015, the number of Chinese traveling abroad on holiday is expected to top 83.75 million and total revenue generated from the sector is estimated to reach 2.3 trillion yuan, according to Shao.

Go to Forum >>0 Comments