Chen Jining, Chairman of the WTCF Council and Mayor of Beijing: Promoting the Revitalization and Development of the World Tourism Industry with Innovative Means

The World Conference on Tourism Cooperation and Development 2022, hosted by the World Tourism Cities Federation (WTCF), opened at the China National Convention Center in Beijing on September 1, 2022. Chen Jining, Chairman of the WTCF Council and Mayor of Beijing, delivered a keynote address at the Conference. He noted that with the theme of "Deepening Cooperation and Innovation for Development", the Conference invited participants to jointly discuss new measures to revitalize the tourism industry, which was of great significance for promoting the sharing of global tourism resources, fully leveraging complementary advantages, and fostering new driving forces for the recovery and development of tourism.

Chen Jining, Chairman of the WTCF Council and Mayor of Beijing

Tourism serves as a bridge to spread civilizations, exchange culture and enhance friendship, and it is an important indicator of improved livelihoods. The recovery of tourism cities is the key to the world tourism revitalization. Chen Jining pointed out that Beijing, as an important tourism city, attaches great importance to the recovery and development of tourism. Since last year, Beijing has been ramping up its efforts to coordinate and enhance pandemic prevention and control and socio-economic development. The city has firmly grasped opportunities provided by staging major events such as the 2022 Beijing Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, to deeply explore the connotations of the capital's culture and tourism resources. It has adopted 18 relief measures to support the recovery and development of tourism and other industries, introduced boutique tourism routes like "Wandering Beijing" and "Roaming Beijing's Suburbs", built a number of new cultural tourism landmarks such as Universal Beijing Resort and Chang'an Mills in Shougang Park, and launched red tourism destinations including the Red Building at Peking University and the Xiangshan Revolutionary Memorial Site. These measures have remarkably boosted the recovery and development of the tourism industry. In 2021, the city received 255 million visits, and the tourism revenue reached CNY 416.62 billion. The two figures increased by 38.8% and 43% year on year respectively.

WTCF is a big family of tourism cities and tourism organizations that join hands for solidarity and cooperation. Since its establishment, WTCF has been adhering to the concept of "Better City Life through Tourism" and is committed to promoting the development experience of tourism cities and supporting the prosperity and development of global tourism. Chen Jining noted that six more cities and three more companies joined this year. The number of member cities and organizations has grown from 58 to 237, covering 83 countries and regions worldwide.

At present, the development of the tourism industry is faced with deep industrial restructuring and development pattern remodeling. Chen Jining suggested adopting innovative means to promote the recovery of the world tourism market and jointly spur the sustainable development of tourism cities.

At the opening ceremony, Chen Jining, on behalf of WTCF, presented a three-point initiative to the world tourism cities and tourism practitioners. The first is to actively adapt to and grasp the new trends of tourism development. He noted that the pandemic has deeply changed travel patterns and demand. In the face of great uncertainties in the resumption of cross-border tourism, domestic tourism has become the new mainstream of tourism consumption, self-driving tourism has become a new highlight, and reservation-based tourism and limited visitor capacity have become the new normal. Cities should focus on the demand of tourists, further innovate the supply of tourism products, vigorously upgrade tourism business forms, and provide tourists with more high-quality and colorful tourism services.

Secondly, cities need to foster and strengthen new growth drivers for tourism. New technologies such as AI, big data, cloud computing and 5G+AR/VR have been deeply integrated with tourism, extending the frontiers of urban tourism and becoming an important driving force for tourism development. A modern tourism system centered on smart tourism is accelerating its formation. Cities should also pay more attention to the empowerment of science and technology, extensively apply digital and intelligent means, strengthen the combination of virtuality and reality, vigorously develop new cross-sector integration models of "Tourism +" and "+ Tourism", spark the robust development of new business forms such as cultural experience tourism and digital virtual tourism, and inject strong impetus into the high-quality development of tourism.

Thirdly, it is necessary to reach new heights in the development of tourism. It has become a broad consensus of the world tourism industry to move forward together. Chen Jining suggested building multilateral service cooperation platforms for world tourism, strengthening urban tourism promotion, enhancing the sharing of customer sources, products, urban culture IP protection and other resources and experience, deepening cooperation on developing boutique tourism routes, jointly improving the tourism safety mechanism, rebuilding the brand images of tourism cities, and providing more high-quality and convenience-based tourism services.