Turismo de Portugal, I.P., the country's national tourist board, has announced the launch of a simplified Chinese version of the country's official tourism website visitportugal.com to coincide with Expo 2010 Shanghai China.

According to Turismo de Portugal, this website is now available in ten languages: Portuguese, Spanish, English, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese.

Turismo de Portugal said that it had decided to launch the Chinese website due to the potential of the Chinese market, with its 1.3 billion inhabitants. In a statement, the board said it has paid more attention to attracting Chinese tourists over the last couple of years, by participating in the main business and tourism fairs such as Beijing International Tourism Expo and China International Travel Mart 2010, and this has put Portuguese hotels and tourism enterprises in contact with Chinese operators and agents.

Turismo de Portugal has a designated area in the Portuguese pavilion at the Shanghai Expo, where visitors can discover the diversity and quality of Portugal's tourism range by accessing the Chinese version of its official website as well as viewing a promotional film on Portugal and reading tourism leaflets in Chinese.

Statistics from Turismo de Portugal show that in 2009 Portugal's official tourism website had around 50 million visits, 29% more than in 2008.