Qunar.com, China’s largest travel search engine, announced a unique partnership with the Shandong Tourism Administration, one of China’s most creative and innovative tourism promotion bodies, to launch an integrated online campaign to promote its destination brand, Friendly Shandong, to China’s ‘elite travelers’.

Under the terms of the agreement, the Shandong Tourism Administration will work with Qunar as a strategic marketing partner to develop and launch a series of themed contests and promotional activities to promote Shandong’s luxury travel destinations.

Shandong is the second most populous province of China and also one of the richest. Modern Shandong is best known for its many famous destinations, such as Qingdao, Yantai, Weihai, Jinan and the historical home of Confucius, Qufu. The National City Games, one of China's most important domestic sporting events, will be held in Shandong in 2009. Shandong province has seen a 21% increase in 2008 over the previous year in its tourism income with 3 million visitors in 2008 and tourist receipts crossing the RMB 200 billion mark. To build on the successes of 2008, the Shandong Tourism Administration was keen to leverage the growing popularity of travel search engines to deliver a promotional campaign aimed at the upper-end of China’s domestic travelers.

Qunar provides the Tourism Administration with highly targeted access to nearly 30 million visitors a month. According to research firm Synovate, Qunar visitors travel more frequently and spend more compared to the average Chinese Internet user. According to the research, Qunar users undertook 15% more leisure trips than general users over the last 12 months, which makes it an ideal channel for Friendly Shandong.

Yu Chong, Bureau Chief of the Shandong Tourism Administration says, “With our Friendly Shandong campaign, we are keen to develop a more affluent segment of domestic visitors. That required us to look at more innovative, and more targeted, methods for reaching out to our audience. Qunar, as a leading travel search engine in China, provided us with the platform we needed to execute more interactive programs. The Qunar user demographic was also a major factor in our decision. We are confident that working together will help us expand and grow our tourist base.”

Fritz Demopoulos, CEO of Qunar.com says of this partnership, “We're pleased to be working with the Shandong Tourism Administration. Among provincial tourism administrations across China, the Shandong Tourism Administration is leading the way in its creative approach to promoting tourism. The many facets of this deal showcase the breadth of ways Qunar helps our partners to achieve business success. Through this partnership, we are jointly creating a wealth of content that will provide valuable information to our users, and help them make better informed travel decisions.”