Travel
Organizations
and Tourist Service
The State
Tourism Administration, functioning under the State Council, is
the administrative organ of the nation??s tourism trade. Its functions
are to formulate policies and establish systems for developing tourism,
draw up development plans, organize foreign publicity and issue
tourism information, and supervise and examine the implementation
of policies and plans. The State Tourism Administration has branches
in all provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, as well
as offices in Tokyo, New York, Paris, London, Frankfurt and the
Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
There are travel agencies in every
city in China. Among them, the following three major agencies host
and make arrangements for tourists coming to China:
China International Travel
Service With headquarters in Beijing and branches in all provinces,
autonomous regions, municipalities and some of the open cities,
it specially serves foreign tourists.
China Travel Service and the
Overseas Chinese Travel Service of China Both cater to overseas
Chinese residents, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan compatriots, and
foreign Chinese returning as tourists or to visit relatives. Both
are headquartered in Beijing, and have branches in open cities,
open areas and hometowns of overseas Chinese, as well as permanent
offices in Hong Kong, Macao and Thailand.
China Youth Travel Service
Based in Beijing, it hosts mainly young foreign people, young
overseas Chinese, and young compatriots from Hong Kong, Macao and
Taiwan.
In addition, there are the China
International Sports Travel Company, China Culture Travel Service,
China People??s International Travel Company, China Tian??e International
Travel Company and China Women??s Travel Service, all catering to
foreign tourists.Since the initiation of the policies
of reform and opening to the outside world, China has built, expanded
and renovated many hotels and restaurants to satisfy the needs of
tourists. China today has over 3,000 star-rated hotels. Leading
five-star hotels are the Palace Hotel, GrandChina Hotel and Shangrila Hotel
in Beijing, the Hilton Hotel, Garden Hotel and New Jinjiang Hotel
in Shanghai, the White Swan Hotel, China Hotel and Oriental Hotel
in Guangzhou, the Fulihua Hotel in Dalian and the
South China
