What is your take on Asia-Pacific growth?

The Asia-Pacific region excluding Japan will grow six per cent up to 2007, making it the fastest-growing region, while western markets have reached a plateau. China alone will grow seven per cent in 2003. The growth for South-east Asia will not be as great and Japan is still a problem. But it is still ahead of Europe and the US.

In 1980, the World Tourism Organization ranked China 18th in the world in terms of inbound travel, in 2001, barely 20 years later, it is fifth. In 2002, the number of inbound travellers was 14 million, in 1990 it was only two-and-a-half million. The average growth in tourism is 15 per cent over the past few years and even with 9-11, the growth that year was nine per cent.

For outbound travel, from 1990 to 2000, the average rate was 26 per cent. In 2002, outbound travel reached 12 million and international travel outnumbered domestic travel and this was even with travel restrictions in place. Revenue was about US$9.2 billion.

A total of 137 million people will travel to China this year which is eight per cent of worldwide travel and this is normal expectations without including the added influx expected for the Olympics in Beijing (2008) and the World Expo in Shanghai (2010).

This will lead to greater freedom including an increase in visa applications for business trips both domestically and overseas.

Sixty per cent of the Fortune 500 have already set up offices in Shanghai and there is tremendous potential for TMCs to establish a foothold there. We have just signed a JV in China with Jin Jiang and a JV with Westminster Travel in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau (BTN Asia-Pacific October 2003). The deal in China took a long time to decide. Gradually as clients became more secure in the country we decided it was time to make a move.

What is the biggest challenge facing TMCs today?

Clients are asking for more tracking of their travellers for safety reasons which is becoming more and more important now. Making the booking is the easy part but if the traveller decides to change his mind when he is on the road then we need a system that can handle this.

Companies are looking for the basic things – responsiveness, policy management and quality – and TMCs are expected to offer these things automatically. But increasingly the future of TMCs is to offer the full outsourced travel service, outsourced supplier negotiation, analysis of e-commerce – when and where is it better to book online, information system implementation and providing global care and security which is of extreme importance to companies now.