Expedia Inc. said it's launching its corporate travel division in China with Chinese partner eLong Inc.
The Bellevue online travel agency (NASDAQ: EXPE) said eLong is the second-largest online travel company in China, and Expedia Corporate Travel (ECT) will allow companies doing business in China to access travel agents who speak both Mandarin and English.
Chinese Internet travel search engine Qunar has reportedly received a round of financing worth US$10 million.
According to published media reports, Lehman Brothers Private Equity Partners led the financing for the oddly named search engine that means "where are you going" in the Beijing dialect. With previous funding from funds like GSR Ventures and Mayfield, now the company will use the money to capture more users from around the country.
JINAN, China -- Coal smog flattened the afternoon sun into a pale disk that hung anemically in the sky outside the bus window.
The tour group had left Beijing after a glutinous lunch of pork and chicken stir-fries, and now we were rolling into the outskirts of Jinan, three hours to the south. Gray and soot-stained, Jinan did not look promising.
"China Focus, China Focus! Now we come into Jinan," our guide said into her microphone. China Focus was the name of the tour company, but it was also how Lisa Li called the group to attention. "Ji means 'the river,' nan means 'south of.' Ji-nan. South of river. It is famous for motorcycles factory and also washing machines."
China's top online travel agent, Ctrip.com (CTRP.O: Quote, Profile , Research), posted unexpectedly strong quarterly profit driven by rising travel demand, pushing up its stock price in after-hours trading.
Third-quarter profit almost doubled to $15 million, or 21 cents per American Depositary Share, from 12 cents a year earlier, as a growing middle class and rising incomes mean more Chinese are spending more on travel and leisure.
BEIJING (Reuters) - China is to scrap immigration laws that restrict people with HIV/AIDS traveling to the country, a health ministry official and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria said on Thursday.
The travel restrictions have been a hindrance blocking people who are HIV-positive from entering China to attend conferences on AIDS and is seen as reinforcing stigmas against those living with the disease.
"China has decided to change its immigration laws, scrapping travel restrictions," Michel Kazatchkine, executive director of the Global Fund, told a news conference.
Nearly 30 million Chinese travelled abroad in the first nine months of the year, up 17 percent as against the same period of last year, a tourist official said Tuesday.
The figure indicates that China remains Asia's largest source of outbound tourists, according to Zhu Shanzhong, a tourism promotion official with the China National Tourism Administration.
Addressing a press conference held on the sidelines of an ongoing tourist trade fair in Kunming, capital city of southwest China's Yunnan Province, Zhu said the growth rate of outbound Chinese tourists has outpaced the average world level.
