All the major travel agencies in Beijing had their travel groups to Africa fully booked long before the traditional golden week holidays this year.

"The increase in number of Chinese outbound tourists to Africa each year shows the great potential of African tourist attraction though the number has so far accounted only for 5 percent of the total Chinese outbound tourists (which reached 31 million in 2005)," said Lin Bo, a director with China International Travel Service, China's largest travel company.

"African tour is very distinctive. For example, the native tribes in Kenya still keep their tradition which gave us real shocks," Ms. Liu, who just concluded her visit to Kenya, told Xinhua excitedly.

"There is a special hotel called Treetops in Kenya," Liu said, "visitors can stay in the trees and get close to the wild animals."

China will implement the program of Chinese citizens' group tour to some African nations and grant more African countries "Approved Destination Status for outbound Chinese tourist groups", according to the Chinese government's first-ever African Policy Paper issued on Jan. 12.

Currently 16 African countries have been granted the outbound destinations for Chinese tourists.

Lin said, "the major African travel destinations are Egypt, South Africa and Kenya. we are going to explore new travel lines."

"It's easy to apply for a visa to African countries, and Chinese visitors can get visas within 7 work days as the African consulates to China are cooperative and never let Chinese tourists down," Lin added.

The tourism administrations in some African countries, such as Kenya and Zimbabwe, has invited Chinese tourism staff to make field trips to their countries.

An official with Kenyan embassy to China said, tourism is one of the largest industries in Kenya, which attracts a great number of foreign visitors every year.

"In recent years we witnessed an ever increasing number of Chinese tourists in our country and we are very optimistic about the future of China's tourist market," the official said.

"The tourism 'hardware' in Africa is good as there are lots of excellent star-lever hotels with complete facilities," said a deputy manager in China Travel Service who only gave her surname as Zheng.

"very few Chinese tourists have been to Africa, a continent full of mysteries, so the African tourist market has a big potential to explore," Zheng said.

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