The National Tourism Administration of China has given licenses to TUI China Travel Company Limited, CITS American Express Travel Services Limited, and JTB New Century International Tours Company Limited.
　　The three joint ventures involve foreign tour operators from Europe, the United States and Japan respectively.
　　Li Mingde, Deputy Director at the Center for Tourism of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences welcomes the move.
　　"The move indicates that our country’s foreign policies have become more open. Many say that travel agencies are a lucrative business. So domestic operators don’t want to share the opportunity of making money with foreign counterparts. But after China joined the World Trade Organization, it has been gradually opening its tourism market by allowing foreign investment to come in and conduct outbound tourism."
　　Previously, foreign tour operators were allowed to operate inbound and domestic travel, but were barred from outbound business.
　　Marcel Schneider, CEO of TUI China says compared with their Chinese counterparts, foreign operators have their advantages in organizing outbound tourism.
　　"We have vast experience of outbound travel in many different part of the world. And we should also not forget that being represented in all major countries, we have huge expertise and we will try to fit our Chinese outbound business into the existing tour infrastructure so that we can guarantee high quality service delivery. All the services are out of the same hand which is TUI."
　　Will foreign operators threaten Chinese travel agencies’ business? Wang Jun, vice general manager of Guangdong China Travel Service Company Limited answers.
　　"Foreign operators will affect our business. But on the other hand, it’s a good move because competing with joint venture companies will drive domestic companies to improve the quality of their service and management."
　　A report released by the China Tourism Academy in April shows that mainland tourists made more than 57 million trips to foreign countries, as well as Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and spent 48 billion US dollars last year.
　　For CRI, I am Zhang Ru.