The Beijing International Tourism Exposition (BITE) 2004 opened yesterday at the Beijing Exhibition Center.

The three-day event, supported by the Beijing Tourism Administration (BTA) and organized by the Beijing Tourism Group of China and Conference & Exhibition Management Services Pte Ltd of Singapore, is the first of its kind in the capital.

At a news conference on Wednesday, Ding Xiaoliang, vice president of Beijing Tourism Group, announced that BITE 2004 has attracted some 325 exhibitors and about 1,500 hosted buyers from 50 countries and regions, as well as 21 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in the country.

The exhibition takes up 11,000 square meters at the exhibition center.

The highlight is a buyer-seller program through pre-scheduled appointments, arranged between the exhibitors and hosted buyers.

"Each of these hosted buyers is expected to conduct between 12 and 18 appointments with the sellers or exhibitors," said Ding.

In addition, the organizers have pre-registered some 1,000 trade visitors from home and abroad. These visitors are also expected to conduct business discussions with the exhibitors.

As guests of the BTA, high-level delegations of tourism officials from abroad attended the exposition.

They include Ong Keng Yong, secretary-general of the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) secretariat, Roberto Pagdanganan, Philippine secretary of tourism, and Anura Bandaranaike, minister of industry, tourism & investment promotion of Sri Lanka.

Beijing received 78 million Chinese visitors and 3.1 million overseas tourists in 2003, said Wen Zijie, deputy director of the BTA.

"So we feel confident to launch a large-scale tourism exposition to provide an exchange platform for tourism sellers and buyers from home and abroad," he said. "We have already decided to hold BITE as an annual event in Beijing."

BITE 2005 will be held on June 23-25 next year.

(China Daily July 23, 2004)