Local authorities in China eye tourism consumption growth

BEIJING, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Local authorities in China have, in succession, introduced policies to promote tourism consumption growth.

Experts predict that the development of the domestic tourism industry is expected to maintain a high growth rate this year, the Shanghai Securities News reported on Thursday.

For example, east China's Shanghai has recently rolled out 30 measures to upgrade its international reputation as a tourist destination.

To make Shanghai more attractive, the municipal government proposed to beautify urban landscape, improve tourist facilities, make the Huangpu River tour a flagship tourism project, and allow visitors to scan QR codes to better understand the city's history and culture at more attractions. Other measures include developing village, cruise, and medical tourism, creating a more friendly environment for investors, and improving tourist complaint services.

Northeast China's Heilongjiang has also recently issued a guideline to vigorously promote tourism growth. It strives to annually receive more than 500 million visitors with the total tourism revenue at 580 billion yuan by 2015.

East China's Jiangxi Province also set a similar goal to bring the total number of tourists to be 800 million annually, with the comprehensive tourism revenue at 1 trillion yuan, by 2020.

In recent years, with the increase of residents' income, tourism consumption has become an important part of the consumption upgrade of residents.

According to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the number of domestic tourists in the first half of the year was 2.826 billion person-times, with the tourism income reaching 2.45 trillion yuan, both exceeded 10 percent growth.

The monitoring data showed that the direct flights of Chongqing, Chengdu, Changsha, etc, have driven the growth of the number of inbound tourists. In the future, as China furthers convenience of visas and increases the number of the air flights, it will surely promote the inbound and outbound tourism, according to Tang Xiaoyun, a researcher with China Tourism Academy. (Edited by Hu Pingchao, hupingchao@xinhua.org)