Japanese travel agencies offer more China tours
9/4/2007 15:49
With tourism peak "Golden Week" in May drawing closer in Japan, Japanese
travel agencies are staging their turf battles, among which one was fighting in
a market expected to boom soon -- China.
"I went to China five years ago in a
two-week tour, to Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou and other cities," a Japanese woman
surnamed Takahashi said. "I plan to go there again next year, to watch the
Olympic Games."
The need of Takahashi and others are closely watched by the
travel industry. A selection of tour lines to a number of cities in China have
already been offered for the May holiday, an annual tourism peak
season.
Several factors are behind the expected boom, including interest
sparked by the 2008 Olympic Games and the just-beginning mass retirement of baby
boomers in Japan, the latest Nikkei Weekly newspaper said.
Also to be counted
on is the warming up of the bilateral ties between Tokyo and Beijing. This year
marks the 35th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between
Japan and China. Kinki Nippon Tourist Co is offering a Japan-China friendship
tour. A four-day tour takes in a giant panda reserve in Sichuan province in
southwestern China. According to Nikkei, part of the tour fee would be used to
support the protection of the rare animal.
Japan's largest travel group JTB
Corp has also marketed several tour lines to China, hoping to turn first-time
Japanese tourists into repeat customers. A five-day tour to Beijing, Xi'an and
Shanghai includes sightseeing at Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City and the
Great Wall in Beijing, as well as Mausoleum of the first Qin Emperor in
Xi'an.
A seven-day tour by JTB also includes scenic cities Guilin and
Yangshuo in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in south China, along with
Beijing, Xi'an and Shanghai. The tour also features local specialty meals as a
selling point.
H.I.S. Co is targeting China's Hainan Island as a relax tour
destination for couples of all ages. To shorten flight time, the agency has
chartered direct flights from Narita airport to Hainan. Two five-day tours will
depart on April 28 and May 2 respectively, each limited to 196 travelers.
The
budget agency said it would introduce more Hainan tours if it can obtain charter
flight slots, according to Nikkei.
The paper quoted industry sources as
saying that more cities in China can provide satisfactory tourism services
thanks to China's rapid economic development. Competition for a bigger share of
the unexplored market is likely to heat up ahead of the Beijing Olympics in
August 2008, it said.
According to statistics, the number of Japanese
visitors to China reached 3.75 million in 2006, a sharp rise from 1.3 million in
1995.
Xinhua
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