Pura Dalem Agung Padantegal
Hoping to increase tourism to Bali in the coming year, Ctrip, a Chinese online tourism company, named Bali the best tourist destination. At an award ceremony on January 13th, the online company also doled out two more awards to Bali. They also received the Best Island Tourist Destination Award and the Best Overseas Tourism City Award.
Many Chinese officers and business people attend the event each year. This year the awards ceremony was held in Lijiang city in Yunnan province, China.
Bali Dancers
Ctrip is an online marketing company, where tourists can book their vacations. The website offers cheap flights, hotels, train tickets, vacation packages and corporate travel. The site maintains over half of China’s tourism market online. They account for over 60,000,000 members and have over 30,000,000 user reviews. They are one of the biggest networks in China with over 70,000 hotels in China and 1,600 flight routes in the country. Internationally, they serve over 9,000 flight routes and 400,000 hotels in almost 200 countries.
“We hope these awards increase the number of tourists, particularly those from China, visiting Indonesia this year and in the years to come,” Indonesian Tourism Minister Arief Yahya said.
To focus on drawing more tourism from China, Arief Yaha stated that Bali will use online tools, like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube to attract more tourism to the island. The country will also begin to utilize platforms such as blogs to educate tourists on the benefits of travelling to Bali, like Bali’s amazing beaches and rich culture. The country will also use these platforms to broadcast travel deals and travel information to Chinese tourists.
Karma Jimbaran Lounge
“As much as 70 percent of Chinese tourists get their information on Indonesia through the Internet. It is a challenge for the ministry to boost promotion strategies through digital media,” Yahya said after the awards ceremony.
Currently, almost 884,000 tourists from China visited Indonesia in 2014, between January and December. Chinese travelers spent on average around four to five days in Bali, and spent approximately $100 USD to $110 UDS per day for each day they spent there.
Soon, direct flights will be offered to Bali from China and Indonesia, making the island more accessible to the countries and more attractive for tourists. Both the ministry and the China National Tourism Administration will be attempting to get more tourists to both Indonesia and China by 2015. Their goal is to increase tourism to 2 million people by this time, more than doubling the number of Chinese tourists who visit Bali in a year. Bali is sure to become one Indonesia’s top tourism destination.
The Chinese tourism market has grown substantially in the past few years as living standards and personal incomes have risen in the country. Both outbound and inbound tourism has seen a significant rise in the past year. Chinese tourists have begun heading to overseas travel destination such as Australia, France, the United States and the Maldives. They have also been exploring Asian countries, like Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia and Thailand. Travel throughout China has also increased substantially by Chinese residents, and local tourism has grown by 10% each year.
Chinese tourists accounted for 109 million people in 2014, an increase of 11%. Chinese residents can now visit 151 countries overseas and that number is expected to increase within the next year.
Popular Chinese travel destination include cities like Beijing, Xian Guilin, Hong Kong, Lijiang and Shanghai. China will see 43 million more tourists flocking to their cities within the next 20 years, and by 2030, officials expect to see 1.8 billion tourists breaching their borders. With so many tourists coming in and out of the country, it’s no wonder both Bali and China have increased efforts to see more travel between their two countries, making both a prime tourism destination.
a blogger, writer and entrepreneur. He wishes he could spend more time in Indonesia.
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