ABSTRACT
China’s tourism industry has been flying high since the country launched its “open-door” policy in the late 1970s. From 1978 to 1999, China’s inbound tourism receipts recorded an increase of fortyseven-fold, and inbound visitor arrivals forty-fold. Today, travel is a multibillion dollar business in China. In 1999 China earned US$14 billion from inbound tourism, making the country the seventh largest destination in the world in terms of inbound travel receipts (WTO, 2000). Impressive as it is, inbound tourism is only a small part of China’s travel business. According to China’s National Tourism Administration (CNTA), more than 710 million Chinese took pleasure trips in their own country in 1999, spending a total amount of RMB 283 billion yuan (or US$29 billion).
