Outbound tourism trend: offline to online

For Chinese tourists aiming to travel overseas, the online travel services have become their top choices, a reflection of booming online travel transactions in China, based on a survey released on the travel summit in Beijing.

In 2013, online travel revenue reached 2.85 trillion yuan ($464 billion), accounting for 7.7 percent of the total revenue in the industry, and it has been increasing.

Besides, tourists are rapidly shifting from offline to online travel transactions. The survey conducted by Ipsos, a global market research company,also said self-guided outbound tourism is booming and in-depth and high-end traveling is gaining its momentum. The average expense of a single Chinese outbound tourist has exceeded 19,000 yuan ($3,095).

Top 10 tourist city destinations in China’s outbound tourism from the 135 member cities of the World Tourism Cities Federation (Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan not included in the list) are Seoul (South Korea) Busan (South Korea) Sappro (Japan) Gwangju (South Korea) Paris (France) London (UK) Rome (Italy) Berlin (Germany) Washington (USA) and Los Angeles (USA).