The 2008 Olympics in Beijing will be instrumental in boosting the number of tourists visiting China. The world’s most populous nation is rapidly becoming a much-preferred tourist destination, having completely recovered from the signs of a slowdown in 2003 and 2004 caused by the SARS outbreak.

A new report has revealed that tourism in China has outstripped the GDP growth rate since 1990. It finds that China is now Asia’s largest outbound tourist source nation, having outranked Japan, the previous leader in the Asia-Pacific region.

The Beijing Tourism Administration estimates that 550,000 international visitors and 2.58 million domestic tourists are scheduled to arrive for the Olympics. The report expects that the host cities to the games and the holding venues themselves will become tourist hotspots. China, which is hosting the games for the first time, believes it can benefit not only from a larger influx of tourists, but also from increased political and economic prestige as a country.

The China Tourism Report Q1 2007 notes that the country’s international tourism receipts for 2006 was the highest in the region. At present industrial analysts predict that China is poised to become the World No. 2 economic giant in the next 10 years as the country’s tourist industry is set to grow by at least 8.7% per year between 2007-2016.