China’s Online Tourism Industry Gets US$7 Billion During First Three Quarters

A total of RMB550.29 billion (approx:US$86.2 billion) worth of investments had been injected into China’s tourism industry in the first three quarters of the year. This represents an increase of 29% year-on-year, 17 percentage points higher than the growth of investments in service industries and 18 percentage points higher than the growth of investments in national fixed assets.

Investments related to online tourism continued unabated, and totaled over RMB45 billion (approx: US$7 billion)in the first three quarters of the year, which is 2.4 times the total annual investment for this sector in 2014.

Vice director of China National Tourism Administration (CNTA), Wenxue Wu, said the massive injection of capitals into the tourism industry helped propagate tourism resources, products and business models. As tourism resources are increasingly capitalized, financialized and securitized, tourism has become a hot spot for investment and presents great potential. To develop a tourism investment platform, he said CNTA has introduced 500 select tourism projects that involved a total of RMB1.4 trillion (approx: US$219 billion)investments this year, and signed a credit support agreement worth RMB1.6 trillion (approx: US$250 billion)with six financial institutions including the China Development Bank.V