定制游 (dìngzhì yóu): Customized tour

According to the first "Customized Travels of Chinese Visitors in Europe" report, jointly released by China's online tour provider Ctrip.com and the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute, the number of customized tours by Chinese tourists grew by 130 percent year-on-year in 2017, which indicates there is a big demand for customized tours in China.

The report was released at the first Business Summit of Ctrip Customized Travel held in Budapest, Hungary, on Sunday.

Customized tours are those with a personalized itinerary. It is a tourism mode that originated in developed countries first with the target customers being middle-aged and elderly tourists with a reasonably high disposable income. In China, on the contrary, the target customers are young people, and the growth rate is very fast.

According to the report, Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou were the top three departure cities for customized tours, which make up 50 percent of the overall customized tours. Second-tier cities such as Harbin, Wuhan, Fuzhou and Nanjing are fast-growing source cities for such tours.

The top three European destinations for Chinese tourists' customized tours last year were the United Kingdom, Italy and France, the report says.