Tourism to bring $200 billion to Belt and Road countries
Chinese residents are expected to make a total of over 600 million outbound trips from the country in the coming five years, while some 150 million of those trips will be made to countries along the corridors of the Belt and Road initiative, the country's top tourism administrator said Thursday.
Addressing the First World Conference on Tourism for Development in Beijing, Li Jinzao, head of the China National Tourism Administration, said tourism consumption along the Belt and Road countries will reach some $200 billion by 2020, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
China has become the world's largest source of outbound tourism since 2012, contributing over 13 percent of global tourism revenue annually, Li said at the 4-day conference inaugurated on Thursday. He added that the country will further ease visa restrictions and exit and entry procedures, and facilitate border tourism.
"Authorities can offer more convenient visa policies to boost tourism to Central Asia, but it may be hard to see tourists flooding into the region, as stability and inclusiveness remain many tourists' top priorities when choosing destinations," Zhang Shangzheng, dean of the Tourism Management Department at Anhui University, told the Global Times.
In an action plan issued in March 2015, China pledged to organize tourism promotion weeks or months with several nations involved in the Belt and Road initiative to enhance international cooperation, China Tourism News (CTN) reported.
China has also vowed to enhance the actual benefits for citizens that tourism development promises, Li said at the conference, pledging to leverage tourism development to lift some 12 million to 14 million people out of poverty.
Wang Zhou, a deputy head of the tourism bureau of Guyuan in Northwest China's Ning-
xia Hui Autonomous Region, told CTN that as a city with a sizable number of residents struggling below the poverty line, Guyuan aims to seize the opportunity brought by the Belt and Road initiative to boost the local tourism industry in order to help eliminate poverty.
"The tourism market in Central and Western China is still immature but promising, and it is already on the rise, as many travel agencies are tapping into their tourism resources," Zhang said.
"But it also requires top-level design to improve the transportation and investment environment," he noted.
In 2015, China's domestic tourism market saw more than 4.1 billion trips, while outbound trips reached 120 million and inbound trips topped 130 million. The tourism industry contributed 10.8 percent of the country's GDP last year and created 10.2 percent of new jobs, according to Li.
China's spending in the tourism sector is likely to triple to 3 trillion yuan by 2020, Li said. Over 1 trillion yuan was invested in the sector in 2015, Xinhua reported.
