To develop tourism in the Three Gorges Dam region China will invest RMB26.9 billion between 2007 and 2020. The funding is aimed at developing tourism in the region to provide jobs for local people.

The forecast is this investment will generate a RMB20 billion return, or 24.7% of the area’s gross domestic product, by 2020.

Li Chunming, vice-governor of China’s Hubei province, is reported as saying that booming tourism will provide jobs and economic growth without posing a threat to the fragile ecological environment.

The money will be used to improve tourist ferry services along the valley, build roads and docks to form a traffic network and improve other tourist facilities around the Three Gorges Dam.

Spanning the Yangtze River, the hydroelectric dam is the largest structure of its kind in the world, more than five times the size of the Hoover Dam.
Source: Opodo

26.9 billion RMB ($3.5 billion) will be invested in China’s Three Gorges Dam from 2007 to 2020 to develop tourism to provide jobs for people relocated for the project.

Tourism will be a pillar sector in the Three Gorges Dam region and should generate24.7% of the area’s GDP by 2020.

The Three Gorges tourism development plan has been issued by the National Development and Reform Commission and has been approved by a group of experts in tourism and city planning.

The fund, financed by government allocations and outside investments, would be used to upgrade the tourist ferries along the valley, build roads and docks forming a traffic network, improve tourist facilities and traffic infrastructure such as accommodation and catering, preserve historic sites and the develop culture-oriented attractions.
Source: People’s Daily Online

Almost every tourist destination looks with envious eyes at the potential of China. Guam, the American island in the Marianas, is no exception.

While the topic of the military expansion dominates the thoughts of much of the government — the US American marine base in Okinawa is moving to Guam — the tourism industry is hoping the federal and local government don’t lose sight of what truly brings in Guam’s bread and butter. According to statistics from the Guam Visitors Bureau last year the island’s tourism industry generated $1.3 billion for the local economy.

As well, tourism accounts for approximately 20,000 jobs on island, or 35% of the island’s employment.

Almost all of the tourists are from Japan. Very few are from China.

Chair of the Guam Visitors Bureau board of directors Dave Tydingco, said, ‘China is the single largest growth market. This year there were 38 million outbound from China going around the world and Guam has a minuscule amount of visitors coming from that area.

‘We want our U.S. representatives to look at encouraging a visa waiver only program for Guam. We want to push forward with an approved destination status with the mainland Chinese government. . . It’s to sustain our economy by allowing to continue to allow tourism to grow.’

The visa waiver idea is interesting. In 1969 Guam initiated its visa waiver program whereby citizens of more than a dozen countries are allowed entry to Guam without a visa for a period of up to 14 days. However travel onward to other U.S. points is not allowed.
Source: Kuam

The capital of Northwest China’s Shaanxi Province is creating an amorous environment with country’s first theme park of love. With an investment of RMB500 million ($657,890), the Qujiang Pond Ruins Park, which features the famous Humble Cave Ruins, is expected to open on April 8, 2008.

Located in Wudianpo Village in Qujiang New District in Xi’an, the Humble Cave Ruins is well-known city landmark because it’s where a popular Shaanxi Opera tells the love story between Xue Pinggui and Wang Baochuan.

The story goes that a prime minister of the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) had three daughters. The youngest named Wang fell in love with and married a poor man called Xue, despite her family’s strong opposition.

After their marriage, the couple lived in a humble cave near Qujiang Pond. Soon afterwards, the government forced Xue to join the army on its western expedition and he was away for 18 years. Wang’s mother tried many times in vain to persuade her daughter to marry somebody else. Finally, the couple was reunited after Xue returned from the expedition.

As a result, the humble cave has become a symbol of faithful love. And Qujiang New District has rebuilt a cave at the site of the legendary one with a statue of Wang.

In addition to its historical references, Qujiang Pond Ruins Park will feature the restored 45 hectares of water in the Qujiang Pond.

The park is part of a 167-hectare tourist attraction which includes the 67-hectare Tang City Wall Ruins Park and 6.4-hectare Zhenguan Cultural Plaza.

With an investment of nearly RMB1 billion ($132 million), the Zhenguan Cultural Plaza will include the Xi’an Concert Hall, Xian Theater, Qujiang Cinema Town, Shaanxi Artists Gallery, Shaanxi Folk Art Hall, and Shaanxi Literary Hall.
Source: Jongo News

To give an idea of the size of the interest in travel, there has recently been a three-day 2007 Domestic Travel Fair in Suzhou. The exhibition area covered 35,000 square meters, with 1,935 exhibition stands. 1,788 enterprises on display. Visitors were fairly evenly split between professionals and members of the public and, in all, there were some 80,000 visitors.

That is a major commercial success.

The National Bureau of Tourism is promoting rural tourism which is a good thing as the cities approach capacity. This idea, perhaps, started in Suzhou. Two years ago, Suzhou Municipal Bureau of Tourism began to regulate the rural tourism market. As you can see from the illustration, used much larger than normal, its tourism industry starts from a pretty solid basis of scenic beauty.

According to Shen Wenjuan, President of Suzhou Municipal Bureau of Tourism, the idea is ‘adjusting measures to local conditions,’ organically combining tourism with agriculture and working towards marketable concepts such as ‘one area with one character,’ ‘one town with one product,’ ‘one village with one landscape’ and ‘one household with one business.’

All of which can be taken too far and result in a strait-jacketed approach to tourism that rarely works. However, it does give a framework on which to build.

Suzhou Municipal Bureau of Tourism set aside a fund of RMB1.8 million for provincial and municipal tourism project construction. Some of the villages have been major successes.

Tangli Village completed the overall planning of Piaomiao scenic spots and built two agricultural family restaurants and a village inn.
Huqiao Village designed an ‘Independent Agricultural Development Park’ and an ‘Agricultural Tourism & Fishing Area,’ for which they have been partially funded.

It probably is not there yet. Much needs to be done. But this approach to rural tourism seems, on the face of it, a natural and intelligent way of extending China’s tourism.
Source: China Economic Net

Experts in China say that with the Olympics as a launch pad and amid a rising global fascination in all things Chinese, China is expected to replace France as the world’s top tourism destination by 2014.

Perhaps. Possibly. Maybe.

That is a long time to forecast major shifts in travel and just extrapolating the current figures is not the way to do it.

According to the China National Tourism Administration the number of foreign visitors to China went from 300,000 in 1978 to 22 million in 2006, excluding arrivals from Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.

If all those tourists go home with stories of low prices, good food, excellent service, superb scenery and sights than those figures will continue to increase. But as so many countries have found out, as the mass of tourists increases so the prices rise, the quality of the food and service goes down, the scenery is full of other tourists. Thus the special attraction of a destination quickly abates and the destination quickly loses its glamor.

Administration vice-president Wang Zhifa told a travel industry forum in Beijing recently, ‘China is now an attractive destination for tourists the world over.’

True. That is now. But what if in the next five years hotel prices climb and the rest of the infrastructure finds it cannot cope with the increase in numbers?

Xu Jing, the organization’s Asia-Pacific representative, said that China was on course to overtake the United States, the world’s number three tourist destination, this year in terms of foreign visitor arrivals. The Asian giant would then pass Spain, number two, by the end of the decade. With an expected boost from next year’s Beijing Olympics, and another shot in the arm supplied by the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. Xu Jing said China will overtake France by 2014.

A lot will depend on the reports tourists bring back from the Olympics. Half a million negative reports and those figures that Xu Jing quotes will never be reached.

This year alone China’s tourism industry is expected to generate $78 billion, 2.5% of GDP, a figure that could rise to $277 billion by 2017, according to the World Tourism Organization.

In Beijing, China’s top tourist draw, according to official figures revenue from the industry is growing at about 7% a year, accounting for around 8% of the city’s gross domestic product.

he broader impact of the thriving sector on the rest of the economy is huge, accounting for $440 billion dollars this year and estimated to reach up to $1.6 trillion by 2017.

It is always difficult forecasting. There is at least a possibility that those figures will not be reached as tourism becomes bogged down by the large numbers. At a guess — and this is a guess, not forecasting — the infrastructure is not yet in place to deal with such large figures. The language problem alone is enough but add to it internal transportation problems and the relative paucity of mid-priced resorts and the conclusion is that much needs to be done before China can easily attain this proclaimed potential.
Source: China Daily

The tourism ministers of China, South Korea and Japan have signed the Qingdao Declaration on exchange, cooperation and the common development of the tourism industry.

Under the declaration, a mechanism will be introduced to allow non-governmental tour agencies to meet, exchange ideas and implement their governments’ decisions.

Cooperation on tourism in the region was formerly limited to talks between governments, and there was no platform for tour companies to have their say. Bringing it down to the lower, commercial, level probably means that there will more meaningful co-operation.

The ministers also agreed to develop tour packages that would encompass leading attractions in the three nations. At the inaugural ministers’ meeting in Japan last year, it was agreed to try and boost tourist traffic within the three countries from 12 million in 2005 to 17 million by 2010.

Steady progress has been made, with the figure last year reaching 13.8 million, up 11% on 2005. Statistics show that the number of Chinese tourists visiting Japan and South Korea has grown rapidly in recent years.
Source: China Daily

The China National Tourist Office a surge in tourism and domestic travel in China will create jobs and boost consumption but, at the same time, it will pose a challenge as the country struggles to provide the necessary infrastructure.

China hosted 124 million visitors in 2006, including travelers from Hong Kong who accounted for more than half, and earned $33.5 billion from tourism.

Coming up are the 2008 Olympic Games and Expo 2010 in Shanghai.

The office believes, almost certainly correctly, that by 2015 China is set to become the world’s top tourist destination and will attract 200 million visitors a year.

That is a bit difficult to cope with so think of 4 million visitors a week. This is growth is already creating demand for hotels, transport and other tourism-related services. At the same time domestic tourism is booming and that has to be catered for as well.

One early and positive move would be to stop the three Golden Weeks when the whole of China seems to down tools to move from one place to another. Almost no other country in the world has anything like it and it puts an immeasurable strain on transport, accommodation and, indeed, business in general.

Shao Qiwei, chairman of the China National Tourism Administration, told a conference in Hong Kong, ‘We’re putting an emphasis on tourism so we can increase domestic consumption and increase living standards.’

Shao said that, while Americans travel on average seven times a year, Chinese now make only one domestic trip a year, but that would probably rise to two within a decade, or 2.6 billion trips.

He said, ‘Vacation travelling is becoming a trend. But there’s an imbalance between supply and demand. We don’t have enough trained staff and we are nowhere near able to meet demand for tourism services.’

According to Pacific Asia Travel Association growth in tourism will create more than 18 million jobs in China in the next decade. At the same time the whole tourist industry has a very long way to go in improving the product before it reaches true international standards.
Source: Reuters

According to the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics China’s inbound tourism industry is growing much faster than expected in some areas. The results of a recent study indicate that over the first five months of 2007, Beijing received over 1.6 million international tourists, up 11.8% on the same period last year. Which is why all of those hotels keep opening.

The bureau said the main source markets for international tourists into Beijing were Japan, the US and South Korea.

Meanwhile, statistics show Tibet received a record 672,000 domestic tourists and 45,000 international tourists over the first five months of the year – an 82% increase on 2006 figures. According to the regional tourism bureau, tourists contributed RMB636 million ($83.5 million) to the economy over this period, up 78%.
Source: TTG

A growing interest in tourism among Chinese who have seen their incomes rise while travel restrictions have lessened could bring a fortune to hotels, tour companies and attractions around the United States.

The number of Chinese who travel outside their homeland each year is expected to nearly triple to 100 million people by 2020. American cities and businesses are positioning themselves to profit from what they hope will be a tourist boom. They are establishing offices in China, and lobbying the government to ease restrictions on travel to the U.S.

Bruce Bommarito, vice president of international market development for the Travel Industry Association, said, ‘In the next 10 years, it will probably dwarf any overseas market we may have, with the potential to dwarf all overseas markets combined.’

It has a lot of growing to do. 320,000 Chinese — 1.5% of all overseas visitors — traveled to the U.S in 2006. Many American entrepreneurs believe that number could soon explode.

Noel Irwin Hentschel, CEO of tour operator AmericanTours International, said China will be her company’s top business focus in the coming decades. She predicted that by 2009 Chinese tourists will account for one-tenth of the roughly 1 million customers her company ferries around the United States each year.

In 2004, Nevada became the first non-nation to win approval from the Chinese government to open a tourism office there and advertise directly to the Chinese public. Los Angeles, San Francisco and Hawaii have since won permission to open offices or hire representatives. And New York hopes to in the near future.
Source: Daily Herald Chicago