COTTM (China Outbound Travel & Tourism Market), celebrated its third successful annual show in Beijing. Last month, nearly 2,000 key travel trade professionals came from all over China and beyond to identify new business opportunities in the rapidly-growing outbound tourism market.

Over 200 travel companies from 50 different countries used COTTM as the major annual focal point to promote their destinations and services to the Chinese travel trade. The show provided the ideal platform for these overseas companies to establish new international partnerships, opening up even more destinations for Chinese tourists.

One of the main highlights of the show included a high-quality hosted buyers’ program where top Chinese outbound tour operators attended both the exhibition and workshops to find the best options to suit their individual travel businesses’ requirements. Over 75% of hosted buyers came from outside Beijing, demonstrating COTTM’s truly national appeal, with particularly high representation from Shanghai, Guangdong, Henan and Shandong.

Maggie Miao, Operations Director of New Shanghai CITS, a leading Chinese tour operator, said: “As one of the hosted buyers, we very much appreciate the work of the COTTM organizers. We are very pleased to have made many new contacts. COTTM really helped us to build more partnerships with international travel trade professionals. We look forward to attending and seeing more new and exciting destinations at COTTM in the future.”

Destinations from over five continents exhibited at COTTM, including tourism hot spots and unusual locations such as Alaska, Barbados, Belarus, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Iran, Kenya, The Philippines, Puerto Rico, Russia and South Africa. With the outbound travel market showing continued strong growth, COTTM attracted double the number of exhibitors compared to 2006. The next show will take place from 14-16 April 2008 at the China World Trade Center.

This year’s COTTM also served as an educational event by partnering with the International Forum on Chinese Outbound Tourism, a strategic alliance that has been confirmed for COTTM 2008. Dr Wang Xinjun, Secretary General of the IFCOT Organizing Committee, said: “We`re delighted to have partnered with COTTM which enabled us both to provide a bigger platform to attendees with the most up to date government policies, outbound tourism trends, commercial opportunities and future challenges. IFCOT and COTTM definitely complement each other.”

Achievements in the outbound tourism industry were celebrated at COTTM with the hosting of The Chinese Tourist Welcoming Awards (CTW). These awards recognized excellence in service delivery to Chinese tourists traveling overseas.

Matt Thompson, Project Director for COTTM, said: “We’re delighted with this year’s exhibition and we’ve had some fantastic feedback from visitors and exhibitors alike. This year’s COTTM has again provided a specialist forum for travel trade professionals from China and around the world to meet and discuss the huge short- and long-term benefits available to them in this market. We continue to deliver a quality event attracting the key influencers in the tourism industry and this trend is set to continue next year. We have been overwhelmed by the positive response from exhibitors and have increased the space at the venue to accommodate for this demand. We would like to take this opportunity to thank our partners for their hard work and contribution in hosting this year’s event.”

Kate Chang, China Representative for Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), concluded: “I’m happy to see that the show is getting bigger in terms of participation from both buyers and sellers. I’m very impressed by the great partnership set up by COTTM and IFCOT, which has strengthened the educational and training element of the show. Congratulations to a well organized event!”