Travelers warm up to online guides

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Gradually, the forum grew into a noticeable online community of travelers through word-of-mouth publicity, and Chen and Lyu turned it from a part-time project into a company in 2011.

Today, the website claims to have around 50 million registered users, with 2 million active users contributing more than 100,000 pieces of travel information daily.

Qyer.com is a similar Chinese website that's popular with travelers. But it focuses solely on providing electronic guides to Chinese tourists traveling abroad. It combines the traditional method of hiring some professional travel writers to author its guides and having users of the website update the information regularly.

"If a travel guide isn't updated in a timely fashion, it's worth nothing," says Zhang Yi, the director of operations at Qyer. "We have more than 200 travel guides of overseas destinations that our website users update every day."

Zhang says that they have four editors who verify the updates submitted by users. But he plans to devolve the verification process to the online community in the future, when users are able to cross-examine information so that it becomes a self-sufficient system.

Given the increasing popularity of mobile devices and networks, the electronic guidebook is evolving quickly. Both Mafengwo and Qyer have already developed several travel guide apps, which allow travelers to interact and share information more conveniently over the phone.

"It's just that printed guide books are past their time," says Zhang.

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