China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) Wednesday punished several travel agencies which arranged illegal immigrants in Europe, in order to further regulate outbound tourism market.

Since European Union became the tourism destination for Chinese tourists last September, several cases of illegal immigrants happened via means of outbound trips.

CNTA decided to suspend rights to organize outbound travel of five Beijing and Shanghai travel agencies.

CNTA said it will strengthen supervision measures in the future in order to promote healthy development of outbound tourism market.

(Xinhua News Agency July 21, 2005)