Internet woos prospective tourists

Lin Tingting takes a selfie during an invited trip to Seoul, South Korea. [Photo provided to China Daily]

About 100 'veterans' are made tourism celebrities in a tourism video alliance of China CYTS Tours Holding Co and yixia.com, a popular video live-streaming platform operator

Lin Tingting's gets to travel free and also gets paid in exchange for sharing her travel experience and tips with her fans. Now, her Weibo microblog account (Abby45) has more than 150,000 followers and her increasing popularity in tourism circles has earned her a contract with Miaopai, a Vine-like short video sharing app, where she has more than 210,000 fans.

Born in the 1980s in Fujian province's Xiamen, Lin started out in the logistics industry, but her love of travel spurred her to share her photos on Poco.cn, one of the most popular photo sharing sites in China.

"I wanted to communicate through the platform and learn photography," she says.

To her surprise, she soon had more than 1,000 fans and received lots of response, which encouraged her to keep taking photos during her trips.

Later, she entered a travelogue competition, where her words and photos won her an opportunity to travel to Thailand for free.

Her posts about her experiences such as a night visit to a zoo then endeared her to many followers.

"Sharing pictures and stories about beautiful scenery, culture, food, especially some small corner which most people may not see is among the charms of a trip," says Lin.

Lin considers her job as helping people to learn about a place in a more vivid and well rounded way, and not always being fun and games.

"I always have to plan ahead before any arranged trips, like carrying a single-lens reflex camera, various lenses and an unmanned aerial vehicle to places such as tall mountains, and choose the best possible sites to take pictures or make videos."

"When I'm back, I write the travelogues and edit the photos and videos."

She improved her video skills when she was chosen to do live broadcasts of the London Olympics in 2012.

"I then learned how to interact with people on the street and interview them," she says.

Lin became a full-time travel blogger in May this year.

And she is among 100 "veterans" who will be nurtured to become tourism celebrities in a tourism video alliance jointly run by China CYTS Tours Holding Co and yixia.com, a popular video live-streaming platform operator in Beijing, which owns Miaopai.

Yixia will invest 100 million yuan ($14.8 million) to promote the alliance, which is designed to boost tourism.

Live streaming has been all the rage this year, with hundreds of short video sharing and live broadcasting platforms springing up.