Chinese tourists who prefer to find an affordable and convenient travel deals are starting to turn to online travel transactions to arrange their trips nowadays, boosting the economy of online travel agencies, a research firm reported.

In 2013, travel transactions online reached 200 billion yuan profits according to data from a research and consulting company. It is up 27.7 percent annually.

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According to Chairman Henrik Kjellberg of eLong, a web-based hotel reservations in China, the online market of tourism in China is starting to grow faster, and is expected to grow bigger compared to other countries since there is an adequate support from the local government. It also has a huge potential.

Three  big players have made big investments in China's online tourism industry. These are Alibaba, Baidu, as well as Tencent. Baidu has Qunar, while Tencent provided funds for eLong and 17U. They also have QQ Travel service, which is owned directly by the company.   

The emergence of the independent tourism market scouting for better services bolstered the gains of online tourism businesses.This is the result of the efforts made by the Chinese government to improve the country's tourism sector.

China's State Council came up with the idea to turn the country's tourism sector into a top pillar industry to support its 2009 economic growth. Currently, the National Tourism Administration (NTA) is celebrating the "Year of Smart Tourism," where the national center can be found in Zhenjiang. There are also 22 main smart tourism cities all over the country, and they are all working to improve the independent travel experience of tourists in China.    

NTA director Shao Qiwei mentioned that an important step to improve the tourism business from the traditional service sector is to implement smart tourism.

But in spite of its big gains last year, the online travel industry only got about 7.7 percent from the total value of the travel market. The majority of the shares still went to the traditional travel agencies with physical offices.