China Travel News

More Chinese travelers than ever before are traveling to the U.S. and Alitrip is looking to provide custom, mobile-booked itineraries through its relationship with North American hotels, airlines and tour operators. It helps that its parent company is the preeminent Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, giving them near-unlimited resources to compete in a crowded Chinese travel market.

Ten quotes on China that were said this year by ten CEOs who are some of travel's biggest decision makers and game changers dictating what direction the industry will take in this market of one billion-plus people.

More Chinese vacationers are cruising than ever before. But the cruise industry still faces challenges, particularly in educating Chinese consumers about cruises and developing an efficient distribution network in China.

As more ships compete for cruisers in China, it’s no surprise that prices are dropping. But as long as returns remain higher than the global average, expect operators to keep flooding the market.

When you operate enough ships to comprise half of the global cruise industry, it makes sense to leverage that scale to increase efficiency and savings. It's actually shocking that Carnival Corp. took so long to do so.

HomeAway, as it becomes part of Expedia Inc., will become more urban-oriented, and Airbnb is determined to onboard vacation rentals in resort locations. All of which means that Expedia, Airbnb, and Booking.com will increasingly butt heads over the next few years.

Quietly, Goldstein has helped oversee the global integration of cruise industry trade associations into one united entity. That re-organization will come in handy during the industry's expansion into emerging markets.

Countries like Singapore and Malaysia will soon become the top international destinations for Chinese cruisers.

North American cruisers are extremely price-conscious. They're likely to move away from expensive cruise brands. A robust market of high-spending Chinese vacationers can't emerge soon enough for cruise lines.

Cruise lines entering China face a dilemma: tailoring the onboard experience to the Chinese may remove some of the Western touches that Chinese travelers actually want from their vacation. MSC Cruises is searching for a middle-ground.