GUANGZHOU: The earnings of most influential travel service companies in Guangdong Province have increased in the summer vacation in a market which an insider said has been monopolized.

Two Guangzhou-based travel agencies, Guangdong Nanhu International Travel Service Co Ltd and GZL International Travel Ltd, announced their revenue for the month of July recently and the two companies earned more than 200 million yuan (US$26 million) each last month.

Nanhu's income was up by more than 70 percent from the same period last year, while GZL's income last month increased about 62 percent compared to July last year.

Even though the number of inbound travelers still takes up a majority of the total number of travelers, the figures of the two agencies show a considerable increase of outbound travelers.

"In our company, the number of outbound travelers in July is two times more than the number of the same period last year," said Zheng Nianjun, chairman of Nanhu.

Up to now, there are about 1,000 travel companies operating in Guangdong. However,several large-sized agencies, such as Nanhu, GZL and China Travel Service Ltd (CTS) are mostly doing the business, according to Huang Jian, spokesman of Guangdong CTS.

"There is no big difference in revenue of the big travel companies, and the sum of their revenues account for more than a half of the total revenue of the market," Huang told China Daily.

He said most companies in the market are small-sized, and they are badly managed.

On the mainland, Guangdong has the maximum number of travellers and the competition among travel agencies in the province is fiercer than any other provinces, Huang said.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, 1.39 billion people have traveled at least once last year, with more than 80 percent of them setting off from Guangdong.

Many travel companies from other places, including other provinces and overseas countries, set up offices in Guangdong a few years ago to cash in on the potential markets.

In 2003, about 500 to 600 travel agencies from other places set up their branches.

However, the number has dropped to less than 200 this year.

Zheng said Guangdong people would prefer signing up with reputed agencies.

Large companies can offer a low price with their extensive networks. Therefore, for small companies and those from other places, it's very difficult to survive in the market, he said.

(HK Edition 08/10/2007 page6)