Tourism and Travel Electronic Commerce in China

Abstract

China, a fast‐growing developing country, is one of the world's most popular tourism destinations because of its large number of historical and natural scenic attractions. With the development of the Internet, tourism and travel electronic commerce (e‐commerce) have flourished in China, and the travel industry has experienced significant structural changes since 1999. This study examines how tourism and travel e‐commerce boomed in China, how the tourism value chain has changed in the new environment, and the current status of China's tourism and travel e‐commerce. Using data collected from 4,980 tourism and travel websites in China and the China Statistical Yearbook 2005, we examine the classification and functions of these websites. Our results suggest that travel agencies provide about half of the tourism and travel‐related websites in China. Most websites still only provide general information, while some provide search, online reservation, and payment services. We also present results on our tourism and travel website consumer satisfaction survey, and discuss the factors affecting consumers' decision‐making process in tourism and travel e‐commerce and the future of the tourism and travel e‐commerce in China.

Keywords:

• tourism
• travel
• China
• e‐commerce
• value chain
• travel agency
• website

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank the special section editors and the two referees for their insightful and constructive comments on our paper. This work was partially supported by a grant from the National Social Science Foundation of China (No. 06BJY101) and a grant from the Modern Information Management Research Center at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology.