At the China Domestic Travel Fair held in Dalian, the China National Tourism Administration and the Bureau of the Shanghai World Expo Coordination designated the first 24 travel agencies to offer tours to the 2010 World Expo.

These travel agencies will organize group tours to the Shanghai World Expo Center during the Expo. Some of the tourist routes will start to accept reservations from July 2009.

The 24 agencies, including the well-known China International Travel Service Ltd. and the Shanghai Tour Bus Center, cover 18 Chinese provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions.

The Expo is expected to attract 70 million people, and group tickets sales are quite important for the Expo. These include 15 million group tickets that are not open for sale to the general public; instead, only designated travel agencies and educational institutions will be entitled to sell group tickets of Expo tourism products.

The second batch of designated travel agencies will be announced later.

(China Hospitality News April 22, 2009)