As China's economy keeps advancing, the attention and eagernessof participation in the world tourism market has grown.

    There are more international booths this year than ever before,and the ratio of the domestic booths to the int'l ones is getting rationalized, with 1,268 domestic booths and 696 international booths in this Mart, as against the ratio of 75.6 percent to 24.4 percent in the Mart 2003.

    There are 81 countries and regions participating in this Mart, 32 and 17 more than the figures of 2003 and 2004, up by 65 percentand 27 percent respectively.

    Ten countries and regions are joining this Mart for the first time.
   
   Overseas buyers keep maintaining enthusiasm toward the Mart and 1,186 buyers from overseas have registered with it to hold business talks with theirpeers.

    The displaying space of the CITM has been further expanded to approximately 42,000 sq m in a bid to cope with the growing demandof exhibitors, which is up 40 percent as compared with CITM 2003 in Kunming.

    The number of booths reaches a highest ever level, 1,964 in total, an increase of 35 percent and 6 percent compared with CITM 2003 and 2004, respectively.

    As the stage of enhancing tourist cooperation between China and other countries and the platform of international tourism business, the CITM has had far-reaching influence along with a bigger scale in China's inbound and outbound tourism and allured more exhibitors from both at home and overseas.

    More than 3,100 exhibitors from varying tourism sectors have attended the mart, 1,400 more than in the in 2003 mart. Among the total number of exhibitors, 1,975 are domestic and 1,125 are overseas ones.

    Experts cited CITM as a major step to develop inbound tourism.

    So far, CITM has been held for six times, four times in Shanghai, twice in Kunming. To date, CITM, which has become the largest international tourism gathering in Asia, plays a vital role in making it known to the world.