With the head office in Heide, Germany, and a Chinese branch based in Shanghai, COTRI offers a broad range of services, including market research, analysis, consulting and coaching for destinations, companies and individuals. In addition, COTRI boasts a wide portfolio of publications, including the latest China Tourism Academy: Annual Report China Outbound Tourism Development 2009/2010 - English Edition.

COTRI cooperates closely with a number of organisations including PATA (Pacific Asia Tourism Association), UNWTO (UN World Tourism Organisation) and CTA (Chinese Tourism Academy), UNCTD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development), West Coast University (Heide), Tourism Research Institute of the Academy for Social Sciences (Beijing), Sun Yat-sen University (Guangzhou), Hong Kong Polytechnic University and other international organisations, national and regional tourism boards, private companies and experts from many countries.

COTRI was established in 2004 by its director, a world-class expert in Chinese tourism, Professor Dr Wolfgang Georg Arlt, a sinologist and tourism researcher with years of business experience in Chinese tourism and an outstanding academic background. Merging academic and business knowledge, COTRI cooperates with a number of leading public and private sector organisations in China and all over the world.

COTRI is an initiator of prestigious China Tourism Welcoming Award, presented since 2004 to businesses and organisations in recognition of exceptional practice in dealing with Chinese Outbound tourists. Members of the CTW Award Winners Club include ACCOR Hotels, Galleries Lafayette, various National Tourism Boards, Hard Rock Café, African Network and many others.

In 2008, COTRI pioneered the world’s first quality label dedicated to Chinese outbound tourism, China Outbound Tourism Quality label (COQ label). While the participation in the scheme allows companies and organisations to tailor make their services to the specific needs of Chinese tourists through training and development, the label itself is a warrant of the highest quality of services delivered to Chinese tourists.

COTRI, in cooperation with Dragon Trail, offers rich resources about Chinese Outbound Tourism market on their joint website www.chinatraveltrends.com. Information from the global media, analyses, advice, blog, community section can be all found there. The website also contains an exclusive Premium Content, which provides research articles, statistical data, presentations, media content and other resources.

COTRI organises customised China Outbound workshops, trainings and Train-the-Trainer programmes both public and in-house.