"Usually, a region's annual tourism campaign would have ended by June," said Zhou Xiaofeng from Guizhou tourism bureau.

But the slack market has made everything different.

"Guizhou will continue the travel promotions till October this year, and add Shandong, Northeast China and Chongqing municipality into the target market list as well," Zhou said.

"Usually, we won't promote our activities in a mature market like Chongqing," Zhou said.

Guizhou, abundant in tourism resources, is striving to realize a seemingly impossible goal of 25 percent growth in the travel industry, he said.

"The budget for marketing will surely exceed what was originally planned, but it's worthwhile because it is imperative for us to restore people's confidence in traveling," he said.

Airlines and hotels are already seen to be offering unprecedented low prices to travel agencies.

"Airlines now offer us a discount of 80 percent on air fare. Last year, if we could get a 30 percent discount during a peak season like July, we would feel very lucky," Zhang Lingjie from CITS said.

Options that used to be closed to domestic tourists also became available to them this summer, he said.

The luxurious cruise boats that used to take foreign visitors on tours of the Three Gorges Dam were opened to domestic tourists this year, at a cheaper price, Zhang said.

Considering all these factors, the cost of domestic travel is at "the lowest point in a decade", he said.

(China Daily July 17, 2008)