The cost of traveling to Tibet will fall by as much as half this winter, according to a recent announcement by the Tourism Administration of the Tibet Autonomous Region.

The administration said tour packages from Chengdu to Tibet will cost half as much as they usually do starting this month.

The administration has persuaded local tourist spots, hotels and airlines to lower their prices during the coming low season. The move is expected to encourage more domestic tourists to visit Tibet this winter, Xinhua News Agency quoted Wang Songping, deputy director of the administration, as saying.

The price cuts will benefit more than just those tourists leaving from Chengdu.

"We are waiting for the final prices from the airlines, because air tickets account for a big part of the cost. But the winter price should be around 4,000 yuan (US$533) from Beijing to Tibet for a roundtrip flight," Guo Weihua, general manager of the domestic tour department of the China Travel Service (CTS) headquarters.

In the summer, the same package would cost 7,000-8,000 yuan. The cheapest tour to Tibet by train would cost at least 5,000 yuan, he said.

However, the summer price, which is higher than that for some packages to Southeast Asia, has not kept people from visiting the plateau. Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, is crowded with tourists in July and August. Air and train tickets, hotel rooms and tickets for Potala Palace are all hard to come by.

"Many Chinese think that if you want to travel in Tibet, you should go there in the summer. They believe Tibet is cold in the winter and the oxygen content in the air is low," Guo said.

Because of this misconception, few people want to travel to Tibet in the winter, so most tour agencies stop organizing group trips to Tibet between October and May, he said.

According to the local meteorology department, the average daytime temperature in Lhasa is 10 C. The plentiful sunshine, dry climate and low latitude would mean visitors would not feel so cold.

A local tourism agency said the number of people traveling to Tibet during the winter had increased by 5 percent since last November. Several big tour agencies have started to create new Tibet packages.

Guo said the CTS planned to organize tour groups to Nyingchi in Southwestern Tibet and Lhasa before the end of this month.

Another major tour agency, China International Travel Service Head Office (CITS), has similar plans.

Zhang Lingjie, deputy general manager of the CITS's domestic travel department, said the agency has reached an agreement with a local tour agency and would start to organize tour groups to Nyingchi in late October. The price will be a little more than 4,000 yuan.

Insiders said Nyingchi, 2,900 m above the sea level, has rich resources for travel in the winter, such as Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon and Midui Glacier.

(China Daily October 8, 2007)