Lotus Travel, Inc.

Lotus Travel, Inc is established in Washington state by Louie Yi in 1995. Specializing in China adoption travel, Yi, his wife Lea Xu and their diligent staff assisted approximately 10,000 adoptive families over the past decade. Lotus Travel's mission is to aid adoptive parents forming complete and happy families, and at the same time help easing problems they encounter while striving through various adoption proceedings.

Prior to the foundation of Lotus Travel, Yi worked as the manager of the European and American marketing department at a local first class travel agency in Guilin, China for ten years and led numerous groups of European and American travelers throughout China, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia . Thinking that he could provide excellent leisure tour packages to China and Southeast Asia based on his extensive travel experience, the travel agent decided to start a full service leisure travel agency in Washington state. The first case Yi received was regarding two Chinese visa applications. A travel agent in Seattle sought help from him since she was not familiar with China travel. After obtaining the visas successfully, the travel agent waited until the last minute to pick them up. Yi felt anxious for the travelers, especially it was an adoption trip. Being confident that he would do much better and seeing great demands for adoption travel, Yi began contacting directors of adoption agencies throughout the United States to present himself, his travel agency and its services, hoping that adoption agencies would co-operate closely with Lotus Travel to ensure adoptive families a safe and sound trip to China.

Fortunately, Yi's great efforts got paid off. A local Seattle adoption agency agreed to work closely with Lotus Travel. Since Yi has been receiving great compliments from many adoptive families, many adoption agencies started to recommend clients to go through Lotus Travel when adopting and Lotus Travel became a travel agency that specialized in adoption travel ever since. In 1998, Yi launched the Ladybug Adoption Packages, featuring business class travel from Los Angeles to Guangzhou on China Southern Airlines, which immediately became popular within the adoption communities. In order to make traveling more convenient for families on the east coast, Lotus Travel began offering the Lotus Blossom Packages, featuring Continental Airlines from Newark to various Chinese cities in late 2005. In 2002, the agency started its first China Homeland Heritage Tour for families that shown interests of visiting their children's motherlands. Ever since, adoptive families think of Lotus Travel when it comes to safe and hassle-free adoption travel and birth country visits.

Currently, besides planning adoption trips for clients, Lotus Travel has been working hard on improving the lives of Chinese orphans who still remain in orphanages in China. Being the founder of Lotus Travel, Yi has been donating funds to various orphanages and non-profit organizations to improve living conditions, cover medical expenses for heart surgeries, sponsor special trips to different Chinese cities for handicapped children, provide financial aid for children to go to school, etc. Two percent of Lotus Travel's China Homeland Heritage Tour cost is donated to the orphanages; by offering these meaningful birth country tours, Lotus Travel helped many orphans and at the same time succeeded in introducing the authentic and inspiring Chinese culture to adoptive parents and their children.