China lags behind in inbound tourism

Some neighboring Asian countries have become strong competitors to China in the inbound tourism market, with foreign travelers' online searches for Chinese tourism destinations increasing much more slowly than for other Asian countries.

The year-on-year growth of the search for Chinese destinations was only 7 percent in 2012, while the growth for India was 21 percent and Thailand was 19 percent, Google Inc said in a report.

"The inbound tourists were shunted to other Asian countries. Their inbound tourism is experiencing fast growth," said Tang Hongbiao, Google's general manager for large customer sales.