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Strategies & Market Trends : China Warehouse- More Than Crockery -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (148)	8/6/2003 12:54:39 AM
From: RealMuLan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6370

Now Is the Time to Visit China, Traveler Editor Says By Alyssa Abkowitz and Molly Feltner for National Geographic News August 5, 2003 Why travel to China right now? The deals are incredible. Ritz Tours, for example, is offering a five-night trip in Hong Kong, including round-trip airfare, four-star accommodations, entertainment, and more from U.S. $777 per person. Through the end of September, Shangri-La Hotels, which has 16 properties in China, is offering up to 40 percent off, with rates starting at U.S. $41 per night. And there are many more bargains out there. We'll keep seeing deals until people can put aside their fears about SARS. China was hit hard, and SARS is a serious virus. But at this point it's safe to travel there. No new cases have been reported since June, according to the World Health Organization. In fact, I'm going in November. How expensive is China once you get there? It depends on how you travel and what the exchange rate is when you go. But, to put it in perspective, for the price of one night in a five-star hotel in Manhattan, you can stay in a comparable hotel in China—plus, get three extravagant meals, a tour guide, and a cultural performance. You can also get great deals right now on silk, jade, jewelry, and rugs. Of course once Beijing hosts the 2008 Olympics and traffic to China increases, prices are likely to skyrocket. So you'd better go now. ... The government is currently developing Shangri-La. What's there, and can travelers go yet? Shangri-La was the fictional paradise in James Hilton's Lost Horizon. A real place in China—the confluence of the Yunnan, Tibetan, and Sichuan Provinces—is said to have inspired Hilton. The area is beautiful, vast, wild, and right now visitors can go to hike or boat. Over the next decade, the government plans to spend an estimated ten billion dollars (U.S.) to turn it into an ecological reserve. They're hoping that it will be a real draw for visitors. But I wonder how carefully it will be developed. It's possible that all of Shangri-La's natural beauty could be ruined if there's no regulation on the number of roads built there or the number of people who can visit each year. The tourism industry didn't really exist until 1978, when leader Deng Xiaoping "opened" China for tourism. So the country's ability to develop its infrastructure is still in nascent stages. Shangri-La will be the first real test to see how well the Chinese government does. ... What is the global impact of this new sector of travelers? I predict that the Chinese will become the number one traveling population within the next 20 years. Here's a country whose population engulfs ours. Even if only one percent of Chinese travelers were to visit the U.S., the revenue we would get from them would be astonishing. In fact, the editors of our Chinese edition report that their readers are most interested in major U.S. cities, including New York and Los Angeles, followed by our national parks. So we could literally see our traffic to national parks increase by up to four times, and hotel rooms in major cities will be much harder to get than they are now. But isn't it terrific that we'll be in a position to welcome a country that really has no sense of America beyond what its people see on television? That's how real global understanding starts. Forget the politicians. Let the people meet. news.nationalgeographic.com