TUI to play the European card

The company has 80 employees in Beijing, with 76 of them Chinese. TUI China plans to add another 30 to 40 more Chinese experts in its outbound travel department.

As the company has for long been focusing on inbound travel and MICE business, Schneider says they have very little expertise in the outbound sector.

"To find senior manager level experts with fluent communication skills in English is very difficult," he says.

"We would rather wait a little longer for the right people to do the right thing than rush to do something that we will regret eventually," says Schneider.

TUI China is expanding in a cautious way, as a typical German company.

"We will concentrate and focus at the beginning on Beijing, our home turf, where we know the environment, and to some extent, we know the competitive landscape the most. Once the Beijing travelers have experienced our services, we will expand our presence in China, but it will be a gradual approach," he says.

Schneider says it is still too early to predict the impact his company will make in the future Chinese outbound market.

"There are only three joint venture travel companies that can conduct outbound travel programs in China, and compared to the some 50 million Chinese tourists traveling abroad, the contributions of the three companies will be very small in terms of numbers.

"I believe, or I hope, in terms of quality approach or service delivery, certain standards will be established, which will also be adopted by Chinese companies," he says.

Dai also points out that the involving of joint venture travel companies in China's outbound travel market will not bring much change to the market in the short term.

"These companies will have strong impact on local companies with higher service quality and different travel experiences, but in the short term, they lack the client network their Chinese counterparts have been establishing for years," Dai says.

Lack of brand recognition is incidentally a big concern for Schneider and TUI China.

"Although we are the biggest travel company on an international scale, in China, we have not yet reached that level. At this point, we don't know, how TUI will be perceived by the Chinese clients," Schneider says.

TUI China will not try to build up brand recognition with advertisements alone, but try to reach out to more target clients with new media and other channels.