The three-day 2018 edition of COTTM (China Outbound Travel & Tourism Market) was launched in Beijing on 16 April. Polish Tourism Organisation developed its own informational-reception stand, which hosted more than 60 meetings with representatives of the Chinese industry – both organisers and travel agencies.
Poland as a tourist destination is currently of great interest for the Chinese sector as demonstrated by the number of travelers to Poland growing by 55% in 2017 to the level of more than 130,000.
The COTTM exhibition, a three-day B2B trade event, is each year visited by about 4,500 representatives of Chinese organisers and travel agencies. The talks conducted at the Polish stand predominantly focused on information about the latest tourism products developed mostly from the viewpoint of individual preferences and thematic stay programmes, family leisure, new sightseeing tours of the country aimed at groups, participating in cultural events planned for 2018-2019, as well as issues related to conference tourism. The discussed stand attracted a large number of journalists. Information on Polish tourism products was communicated in the form of, i.a. an interview for the Travel Link Daily trade journal and the 163.com news portal.
In the course of the exhibition, an initial agreement about strategic partnership between the Beijing-based office of Polish Tourism Organisation (Polska Organizacja Turystyczna – POT) and Tongcheng International Travel Service, the third largest online travel agency of the People’s Republic of China, was ceremoniously signed. The agreement is intended to launch joint efforts at making Poland an increasingly popular travel destination by using tools of Tongcheng’s sales portal (www.LY.com). Tongcheng also signed an analogous agreement with Serbia.
