An audience of more than 250 esteemed government and tourism leaders from around the world and China gathered in Beijing’s Chinese Ethnic Culture Park on April 25 to celebrate the introduction of .travel’s new search tool – www.china.directory.travel.

Aimed at promoting China’s magnificent depth of tourism assets, the new China Directory is a progression of the online search tool the .travel Directory – a virtual catalog of every travel product and service offered by .travel registrants that provides travel professionals and consumers with an improved method to locate travel information on the Internet with a degree of detail never before available. The China travel portal currently offers information with more than 7,000 destinations and travel-related companies in China. Unveiled last week in Chinese, www.china.directory.travel will soon be available to consumers and businesses around the world in 11 different languages.

“At the new forefront of the travel and tourism industry, China provided the perfect demonstration platform for the capabilities and effectiveness of the .travel Directory as an advanced sales and marketing tool for the industry,” said Ron Andruff, president of Tralliance.

“Last week’s launch of www.china.directory.travel helped open the doors to a whole new world of online travel, providing travel agents, operators, and consumers around the world with the means to easily locate and identify legitimate China tour and service providers.”

While the overall utility of the .travel Directory will grow over the years to come as it becomes populated with more and more travel and tourism entities, www.china.directory.travel provides a cornerstone for the .travel virtual global marketplace of travel and tourism destinations and is an important advancement for the China tourism industry that will help increase the visibility of its amazing and vast tourism assets.

“The .travel directory comes to China at an advantageous time. With the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games nearing, China is focused on preparing for the millions of visitors expected from around the world,” said Mr. Tang Hongguang, Director-General of the Information Center of the China National Tourism Association (CNTA).

“Currently, the total number of trips taken domestically is up to 1.39 billion while 125 million foreign travelers have entered China. www.china.directory.travel will not only help to further promote the country’s abundant tourism assets to the millions of travelers China hosts annually, and the many more anticipated for the Olympic Games, but provide greater access to travel information about China to consumers around the globe.”

Following the November 2006 launch of www.China.travel at the China International Travel Mart (CITM) in Shanghai, www.china.directory.travel presents the next step in a coordinated strategy to communicate to the global travel community the vast wonders the ancient and majestic land has to offer. The China Directory will enable all cities, tourism destinations, attractions, theme parks, sacred and heritage sites, national parks and reserves in China to be presented online to a worldwide audience in 11 languages.