Tailor-made travel

Speaking about how the business works, he says a company usually arranges for one or two group trips for its employees a year.

"For example, we arrange a fruit picking trip in spring and a rafting one in summer."

For senior officials, special transportation and hotel arrangements have to be considered and planned accordingly, he says.

As for how the trips are planned, he says: "Our customizers narrow down the choices by asking customers such questions as the places they've been to, the travel duration and the travelers' age range."

Then, several solutions are presented to the client. And per capita spending usually is around 3,000-6,000 yuan for long-haul domestic trips or those abroad, says Duan.

Meanwhile, China's biggest online travel agency Ctrip launched a business trip customization platform on Jan 18.

Speaking about the platform, Xu Zhiyun, the CEO of Ctrip's tailored tour services, says: "We found demand for business (trip) customization growing in the second half of last year. So, we felt it necessary to develop an independent platform to run it."

Ctrip's company trip customization platform generated 1 billion yuan in 2017, and Xu expects the number to quadruple in 2018.

"Company (tour) customization has big potential, and it won't take long before it takes up half of the customization market," says Xu.