Domestic travel intermediaries will face tighter controls to prevent illegal emigrants from taking advantage of outbound tours, said a spokesperson with the National Tourism Administration.

A cross-boundary tour network management system is to be established by the end of this year to enhance the supervision of domestic travel agencies, the administration said.

The administration announced earlier that it will join forces with several other government departments to launch a comprehensive shakeup of China's tourism market.

The focused sectors include travel agency management, tour guide supervision, outbound tours and illegal travel business operations.

The spokesperson said the administration will multiply checks on tourist guides in a routine and centralized manner.

From September 1 on, Chinese tourists will be able to travel to 29 European countries without applying for special permission from the State.

These countries are Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Romania, Liechtenstein and 24 European Union members.

However, tourists have to turn over a large cash deposit to travel agencies as a pledge against illegal emigration.

The first Chinese tourist group to travel to Europe departed from Beijing on September 1 via Air China.

The 50-strong group will take a 12-day tour throughout three European countries,France, Switzerland and Italy.

On September 4, Switzerland gave a warm reception to the group.

Switzerland Tourism "has reason to celebrate" since "the arrival of the group is proof that Beijing's decision to grant EU members and Switzerland 'Approved Destination Status' (ADS) is bearing fruit," said an official website for Switzerland, Swissinfo.

According to Swissinfo, Switzerland Tourism is predicting that the number of nights Chinese spend in Swiss hotels will treble to 300,000 by 2007, putting Chinese second behind only the Japanese among Asian travelers. It is the first good news the tourist industry has received in many years there, officials said.

Thanks to the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS), the proportion of cross-boundary passenger trips by Chinese mainland visitors to Hong Kong has almost doubled within two years, according to survey results released last Thursday by the Hong Kong planning department.

The survey, conducted between November 15 and 28 of last year, revealed that 10.2 percent of all cross-boundary trips made during the two-week survey period were by visitors from the Chinese mainland, compared with only 5.3 percent in the previous survey in November 2001.

It indicated that 62.2 percent of trips made under the IVS were for leisure purposes, compared with only 36 percent for other trips made by visitors from the Chinese mainland.

The survey, the third of this type, was carried out at eight immigration control points.

A total of 49,200 passengers and 11,700 drivers of cross-boundary vehicles were interviewed at various control points in the two-week fieldwork period, with a 91 percent overall response rate.

"The results were used to postulate the general pattern of the total 5,359,800 cross-boundary passenger trips and 545,800 cross-boundary vehicle trips during the period," the spokesman said.

Last year, there were 20 million outbound Chinese, an increase of 21.8 percent over the previous year, according to administration statistics.

By the end of last year, the number of Chinese travel agencies qualified to offer outbound tourism packages reached 528. There were less than 70 in 1999.

(China Daily September 6, 2004)