With the weeklong National Day holiday around the corner, tourism officials from around the world have flocked to China in hopes of capitalizing on Chinese holidaymakers.
"The growing potential of China's tourism market is lucrative for the whole world, including Egypt," said Dr Nasser Abdel-Aal, tourism affairs consul of the Egyptian Embassy in China.
Dr abdel-Aal attended a Yangtze Delta tourism fair that opened over the weekend in Wuxi, a scenic city in Jiangsu Province.
His country signed a memo with China in 2001 that designated Egypt a country of destination for Chinese tourists.
According to Abdel-Aal, the number of Chinese tourists to Egypt has been doubling annually since Egypt received the first group in 2002.
"Chinese travelers usually spend more than US$200 a day and their duration of stay is eight days," he said.
"That's why we have taken a keen interest in the China market."
Singapore has chosen a trendy pop singer named A Do as its spokesman to promote tourism in that nation.
The city-state will focus on the booming Yangtze Delta market instead of big cities such as Beijing and Guangzhou, said Jane NG Siew Wai, a Singapore Tourism Board official.
She noted that tourism authorities in Singapore are offering a wide range of cultural and food products as enticements.
About 670,000 Chinese tourists visited Singapore in 2002.
Another hot travel destination for Chinese is the Republic of Korea.
Rok tourism authorities are promoting tours of TV production studios where famous sitcoms are made, said Han Hwa-Joon, head of tourism affairs at the ROK Consulate in Shanghai.
Han estimates the number of Chinese tourists to ROK will exceed 600,000 in 2004.
Travel representatives from the Philippines, Hong Kong and Macau also attended the fair.
China is among the top 10 nations in terms of the number of outbound tourists, according to the World Tourism Organization.
About 16 million Chinese traveled overseas in the first seven months of 2004, a 63.7 percent rise over the same period in 2003, according to the China National Tourism Administration.