Publisher's delight for printed travel guide demand

A customer selects travel guides at a bookstore in Beijing.

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According to an Oct 10 report by the China Tourism Academy, 2.8 billion people visited domestic tourist sites in the first nine months of the year, a year-on-year increase of 10 percent. The number of Chinese travelers to foreign destinations reached 85 million in the same period.

Another notable trend is the growing number of elderly Chinese tourists, many of whom rely heavily on printed travel guides rather browsing through travel websites.

The growth in tourism has also made international publishers of travel guides look at China. Lonely Planet, billed as the global backpackers' bible, is among the foreign early birds. Since it entered China in 2006, Lonely Planet has published guidebooks on more than 40 destinations in Chinese, and the series has grown popular with Chinese travelers.

In 2010, the total sales of Lonely Planet guidebooks in China topped 500,000 copies, says Li Muze, a marketing executive for Lonely Planet in China. "This year, the print volume of our series is estimated to cross a million, which is a handsome number in the globally declining market of guidebooks."

Besides the strong brand image and the growing number of tourists, the content has contributed much to Lonely Planet's success in China, Li adds.

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