China's top travel professionals gathered in Beijing last week to identify opportunities and discuss trends in the country's travel market, which remains the world's most rapidly emerging even as the world economy faces huge challenges.

TravelDaily, China's leading online publisher and event organizer with emphasis on trends in the distribution, marketing and technology of the travel and tourism industries, hosted the 2009 China Travel Innovation Summit from May 12 to 13, 2009, at Beijing's New Otani Chang Fu Gong.

Featured speakers were some of the most powerful companies and brightest minds in the Chinese travel industry, hailing from companies like Amadeus, PayPal, Travelzoo, UATP, AMEX, Google, Baidu, Ctrip, eLong, Qunar.com, Yiqilai.com, Lufthansa Airlines, DerbySoft, CHINAonline and Oyesgo.

The two-day conference had more than 280 registered attendees, decision-makers representing various sectors of the travel industry, from airlines to online travel booking to hotel and car rental businesses. The conference kicked off with a presentation of PhoCusWright Asia Pacific's recent report "Corporate Travel Management and Travel Practices in China," and concluded with a "Start-up Challenge," in which five entrepreneurs pitched their travel-related business before a panel of experts. Nile Guide, a personalized trip planner and travel itinerary site, beat four other start-ups--YourTo, Feeyo.com, HiCafe and Lostrip – garnering the most SMS votes during the Startup Challenge Pitch and winning the TravelDaily Innovator Award.

Other topics covered in the summit's 14 sessions were: social networking sites, online video, user-generated content, meta and semantic search, online travel management, hotel distribution and investment.

"I am so pleased to see Chinese travel companies looking for innovative ways to serve their customers," said Eva He, marketing director of TravelDaily. "The start-up challenge was really an exciting session and we were so proud to have the most innovative entrepreneurs showcase their solutions to the industry at our show. I believe they will have a significant impact on the competition landscape of China's travel industry."
 
TravelDaily's next conference will be the China Travel Distribution Summit in November of 2009 at the Shenzhen OCT International Hotel. Registration for the event will begin in July.

About TravelDaily

TravelDaily( www.traveldaily.cn ) is China's leading online publisher and event organizer focusing on distribution, marketing and technology developments in the travel and tourism industries.
With our China focus, our up-to-minute news and feature stories combined with in-depth analysis by leading industry experts will keep you up-to-date with the latest trends in the industry.

For more information, contact:
Ms. Ivanka Ge
Tel: 86 20 8760 5706
Fax: 86 20 3761 5190
Email: ivanka@traveldaily.cn