Chinese holidayers may find they don't need to wait for plane tickets to arrive by post any more. In fact there can be no "tickets" at all. Electronic ticket, meaning a couple of minutes' Internet surfing, can send anybody with an ID card and a bank account to their chosen flight.

E-ticket works on a rather simple principle. All the information contained in a paper ticket are input into an electronic form by travelers when they visit an E-ticket distribution website. Travelers pay for the tickets via real time online bank service, and receive a confirm code from airlines. Then, to board your flight you just need to show your ID card and the code at the airport.   

Passengers board an Air China flight in Jiuzhaigou, Sichuan province. Chinese holidayers may find they don't need to wait for plane tickets to arrive by post any more as electronic ticket becomes a new fashion of air travel in China. [newsphoto/file]

It's surely more than a paper-saving innovation.

"Electronic ticketing is the direction where the world's major airlines are heading," said Qian Yu, general manager of a major Chinese E-ticket distribution site. "It makes passengers' air trips much easier, and helps the airlines to greatly reduce their ticketing cost."

According to Qian, E-ticket can cut Chinese airlines' ticketing cost by 7 percent to 10 percent. A report by International Air Transport Association (IATA) said the ticketing costs for a paper ticket average between seven and nine US dollars while an E-ticket averages merely two dollars.

 "70 percent of the flight tickets were purchased via electronic ticketing in the United States in 2004. China's electronic ticketing is still in its early stage compared to this number." Qian said, whose goldenholiday.com website boasts one of few pioneer E-ticket sites in China.

Cultural difference has been a problem for Chinese consumers to adopt the concept of online payment instead of cash payment. But as more and more domestic airlines and ticket distributors start E-ticket service, Chinese travelers especially the young urban professionals begin to embrace the new travel style of the Internet era.

"Facing a market with 87 million online users and more than 50 million computer terminals, we have every reason to be optimistic about the future of E-ticket in China," Qian said.     

Editor: Catherine