Yesterday I heard from the TV news that traditional media is facing the challenge from the emerging IT services, including 
those big-name mass media companies like CNN. In China, since the post-80s and post-90s are becoming the major class of customers, those traditional industry fields have to seek new products or methods to attract them. So the China Tours operators are adapting themselves to this new trend. One way is to provide online services and finish all the steps through e-commerce. For example, now you can book and pay for the China Hotels, flights, transportation, and tour packages online.
One benefit of online tour operators is the low cost, compared with traditional travel agencies. When I was studying in Canada, I used to use the expedia and priceline for my DIY trips either within or outside of Canada. I have never been a customer of online tour packages provided by these two popular websites, and I thought DIY trips could save more money than these packages. 
But two of my friends’ experience of online tour operator changed my mind. For the same trip to the Disney World in Florida, they spent all most the same amount of money for a week as how much I cost for four days. I was stunned by this comparison, and I doubted how they could get profits from such low price. So I did some “research” on the e-commerce. Then I realized that the key point of remaining profits for online tour operators is to lower their expense on employees, office spaces, and other charges. The traditional travel operators need to open a lot of branches, recruit more employees, and spend a lot of time on consulting the arrangements for travelers. However, these new online tour operators only require a relatively small office with fast speed internet, several employees for confirming the order or consulting. Even besides the office, their employees can work from everywhere and such part-time jobs are preferred by students who can stay in school and work as well.
Another advantage is attracting many DIY travelers, like me, as well. You can select from a bunch of hotels, airlines, transportations, tour sights and combine these as your own trip plan. If you are busy but still want some tastes of DIY, you can just book a tour package through these tour operators. 
They can only give you a rough schedule, standards of hotels and price. What you need to do is choose the specific arrangements or combinations. Plus, when booking the hotels and transportation vehicles, you can refer to the reviews of previous customers and decide whether it fits your needs. In return, you can write down your compliments or complaints under the review section after you finish your trip.
Since I explained these two major benefits of online tour operators, you may be curious about the situations in China and what you should know before choosing a China tour operator. 
When searching “china tour operator”, google returns about 1.5 million results.Oops! Do I need to click them all? Absolutely, No! People’s habit for searching is to just click some results in the first few pages. Or some of them just open the websites on google’s advertisement sections. Besides this usual method, you can also go to the online forum for the purpose of searching recommendations or reviews. Also you can go to the official website of Chinese tourist administration so that you can check if these online tour operators are qualified travel agencies. Unfortunately, till now there are only several online tour operators for international travelers, such as ctrip and China Travel Depot which is a state-owned enterprise.
What I would expect in the short term future that many more online tour operators will be coming up and soon you can book travels to more Chinese cities, like Travel to Guilin.
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