Global travel search site Skyscanner will launch an online campaign to distribute 120,000 yuan ($19,579) in travel vouchers in China to promote outbound independent tours and to encourage Chinese to travel with friends. Photo: Xu Lin

Global travel search site Skyscanner (www.tianxun.cn) will launch an online campaign on Nov 19 to distribute 120,000 yuan ($19,579) in travel vouchers in China to promote outbound independent tours and to encourage Chinese to travel with friends.

One can join the Sky Team Campaign via Skyscanner’s official micro blog and WeChat by playing an online social game with friends. The funds are divided into three categories – cuisine, shopping and leisure, and the teams with the highest scores in each category will win 40,000 yuan worth of travel spending. The campaign will end on Nov 30.

Skyscanner started the warm-up for the campaign on Saturday (Nov 15) at the vintage fair of the overseas travel website Qyer.com, where about 26 foreign tourism bureaus have set up booths to promote themselves.

Visitors made paper planes, played a dart game and the Sky Team Campaign’s online game at Skyscanner’s booth to win souvenirs and enter a lucky draw for an air ticket worth 5,000 yuan.

More and more Chinese visitors are taking outbound independent tours in recent years. According to Skyscanner’s database, in the busy season of October, the number of such tourists from the Chinese mainland increased by 70 percent compared with last October.

The data shows that the top 10 popular destinations for mainland tourists in 2014 have been London, Hong Kong, Bangkok, New York, Taipei, Seoul, Singapore, Los Angeles, Istanbul and Athens.