A GROWING number of young Chinese are looking to mix business with pleasure. One of them is Chen Lin, who decided to join the tourism industry after she completed middle school nine years ago.

    The 25-year-old from the southwestern province of Yunnan says: “I grew up in a village and wanted to become a tour guide and see the world.” 

    Her determination saw her share her enthusiasm with her guests, leading her to leave her footprints across Yunnan and coastal Hainan Province.

    After first doing traditional tours, Chen decided to focus on tour customization in 2016 when her travel agency began working with domestic online travel giant Ctrip. After receiving training, Chen became a certified tour customizer with Ctrip in 2017. It thrilled her that she could expose her guests to more cultural and folk customs.

    Chen has guided nearly 10,000 travelers over the past two years, and her increasing familiarity with different destinations has also helped her improve her own travel experience.

    The tourism market, with its flexible working hours and lucrative prospects, is drawing many young graduates. Chinese tourists made 149.72 million outbound international trips in 2018, an increase of 14.7 percent year on year, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism said recently.

    The number of domestic trips totaled 5.5 billion in 2018, a rise of 10.8 percent year on year, according to an annual report published by the ministry.

    The country’s tourism industry generated 5.97 trillion yuan (US$860.38 billion) in revenue in the past year, an annual growth of 10.5 percent.

    Custom tour operators can typically earn about 9,000 yuan a month, while more experienced guides can rake in as much as 40,000 yuan a month, a recent tourism career report by Ctrip said. 

    Young graduates who work as local tour guides report daily incomes of 500 to 1,000 yuan.

    For entrepreneurial youngsters who have started up their own tourism operations, annual income has broken the 10-million-yuan barrier, according to Ctrip.

    For now, the travel agency is working with vocational tourism institutes to offer training to potential candidates. To date, 38 percent of Ctrip’s customizers are college graduates with a bachelor’s degree, while 3 percent of them hold a master’s degree.

    Of the recent graduates from Ctrip’s training programs, about 20 percent have master’s-level or overseas education experience, the agency says.

    In terms of age, those born after 1995 account for 34.8 percent of the group.

    Xu Zhiyun, a senior executive with Ctrip’s tourism training, says: “Young people pursue individuality and have innovative ideas. They are bold when it comes to having fun, which fits in with the needs of travelers seeking customized products.”

    In terms of geographical distribution, custom tour specialists are mostly found in Beijing, Shanghai, Kunming in Yunnan Province, Chengdu in Sichuan Province, Suzhou in Jiangsu Province, and Guangzhou and Shenzhen in Guangdong Province, according to Ctrip.

    Women tend to dominate the profession as they are naturally disposed to being meticulous and patient, while their male counterparts are preferred by female tourists, says the travel agency.

    The agency also says that many of the tour customizers have launched their own business ventures after a few years in the industry.

    Liu Guoyang runs his own culture and tourism company. The Xi’an resident, who was born in the 1990s, set up his own business last year.

    Liu decided to pursue tourism management at college out of his love for travel.

    “It’s a bit off my family track, since my father studied law and my mother learned English,” he says.

    Liu received his tour guide certification at college and couldn’t wait to get out into the field after graduation.

    He showed people what Xi’an had to offer in 2012 before leaving for Tibet Autonomous Region.

    Liu, who lived in Tibet from 2013 to 2015, says: “I believe I traveled 100,000 kilometers during my time there.”

    Although his income was not stable at the beginning of his career, Liu says he enjoyed what he did and learned things that were more valuable than money.

    “It was an eye-opening and rewarding experience to visit different places and meet new people and share information about culture and religion with them.”

    The experience in Tibet gave him a different perspective on how to be a good tour guide when he returned to Xi’an at the end of 2015.

    “I found that places like Xi’an and Tibet are more about culture and history, which puts more demands on the tour guide,” he explains.

    Liu began to read books about local history and cultural relics.

    “Relics can often be hard, cold objects, so you have to dig deep into the stories behind them to help people understand them,” Liu adds.

    He has also learned about the Internet. “I believe the Internet will be the shape of things to come in the tourism business,” Liu says.

    With his accumulated knowledge, Liu then began to write stories about the relics on his social media account.

    “I tried to make each story interesting and based on facts to better publicize them,” he says.

    So far, many of his stories have garnered around 90,000 views each, and his WeChat account has more than 20,000 followers.

    This online fame has also helped make Liu a hit at Ctrip’s platform for local residents to introduce their hometowns to tourists.

    “Many of the customers are willing to pay for well-organized cultural tours,” Liu says.

    He now has a steady clientele, thanks to recommendations spread by word of mouth, and his income has tripled.

    Speaking about his future plans, Liu says he wants to write a book on cultural relics.  (China Daily)