China has over 37,000 travel agencies

BEIJING, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- China had a total of 37,794 travel agencies by the end of June 2019, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism (MCT) announced Wednesday.

Five provincial-level regions, namely Beijing and the provinces of Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shandong, each has more than 2,500 travel agencies, with south China's Guangdong Province ranking first with a sum of 3,108, according to the MCT.

In the first six months of 2019, Chinese travel agencies handled over 8.56 million inbound trips. The Republic of Korea, the United States and Japan are among the top 10 tourist source markets, according to a report recently released by the MCT.

The report also showed that in the same period, Chinese tourists made over 30 million outbound trips via travel agencies, and Thailand was the most popular destination.

As for domestic tourism, over 78.12 million domestic trips were handled by tourist agencies in the first six months of 2019. Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Hubei provinces ranked top three in the number or tourists received.

The market shares for inbound tourism, domestic tourism and outbound tourism are 6 percent, 79 percent and 15 percent, respectively, according to the MCT.