Chinese tourists spend more via online travel agencies: report

BEIJING - Chinese tourists spent more money via online travel agencies (OTA) thanks to rapid growth of e-commerce and mobile Internet, according to an industrial report.

Chinese tourists spent over 600 billion yuan ($87 billion) via OTA platforms, up 34 percent year on year and way more than tourism spending via brick-and-mortar travel agencies, according to a report by China's largest OTA Ctrip, citing data from a research company.

The report said that Ctrip had about 250 million users, who spent over 20 billion yuan via its OTA platform in 2016, with each customer paying over 3,000 yuan.

Meanwhile, the majority of the orders were made via mobile terminals such as cell phones instead of computers.

About two-thirds of tourism spending via Ctrip went on overseas trips, the report pointed out, adding that Thailand was the destination where Chinese outbound tourists spent most, followed by Japan, the Republic of Korea and the United States.

Official data showed that domestic tourists made 4.44 billion trips last year, up 11 percent year on year, with 122 million outbound trips made in 2016.

Ctrip expects domestic and overseas trips to exceed five billion in 2017, with 123 million overseas trips and over 5 trillion yuan in total tourism spending.