Beijing Fragrant Hills Tourism Summit of the World Tourism Cities Federation Concludes

The three-day Beijing Fragrant Hills Tourism Summit of the World Tourism Cities Federation concluded with great success and much accomplished. The summit was deemed an achievement thanks to the support of relative authorities, all society trades, and through careful organization and positive efforts of the prepatory team. The summit also developed the theme, “Tourism Makes City Life Better”, and planned a tourism festival.

I. Much Concern, Grand Scale

This meeting is very important to the Beijing Municipal Committee and Government and related ministries of the central authorities. Leaders and honored guests that attended the summit include:Vice-Chairman of the CPPCC Lin Wenyi, acting Beijing Mayor,Wang Anshun, National Tourism Administration Director Shao Qiwei, Vice Minister of Civil Affairs Jiang Li; Beijing Municipal Committee Standing Member, Minister of Propaganda, and Vice Mayor of Beijing, Lu Wei, Beijing Vice Mayor Ding Xiangyang, and others attended the inaugural World Tourism Cities Federation meeting held on September 15. The World Three Tourism Organizations, the World Tourism and Travel Council CEO and president, and the CEO of Pacific Asia Travel Association delivered speeches during the meeting. The Secretary-General of the World Tourism Organization delivered remarks this meeting and gave speeches, and Secretary-General of the World Tourism Organization gave a video speech.

23 of 24 international city members dispatched representatives to attend this meeting, and moreover, London also sent representatives to attend this meeting as the observer; all of 23 Chinese city members (including Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Macao Special Administrative Region) and 11 non-city members appeared in this meeting; among which, mayors of Busan, Dublin, Riga and Victoria were present in person.

II. Rich Contents, Remarkable Achievements

With the theme of “Tourism Makes City Life Better”, this meeting had arranged the General Assembly, First Council, World Tourism City Exposition, Beijing Fragrant Hills Tourism Summit, Special Communication, Inaugural Meeting of the WTCF, World Tourism City Movie Show, World Tourism City Beijing Food Enjoyment, Awards Night, and so on during the duration of 3 days.

(I) Food Enjoyment

To show the food cultures of city members, the organizing committee had selected over 130 enterprises which could represent the catering features of various city members from more than 40,000 restaurants and catering enterprises of Beijing to participate in this activity. Within this period, these catering enterprises organized a variety of activities, disseminated their own delicate foods and catering cultures, and recommended classical foods and main dishes matching the theme. Meanwhile, the organizing committee set up food topics through such methods as newspaper, website and micro-blog to introduce and publicize Food Enjoyment related activities and recommend food and dishes from around the world.

(II) World Tourism City Movie Show

At the opening ceremony of the World Tourism City Movie Show, Standing Member of Beijing Municipal Committee, Minister of Propaganda, Vice Mayor of Beijing City, Lu Wei, and leaders of State Administration of Radio, Film and Television thought highly of this activity. He said this movie show was another perfect combination of tourism and culture. Beijing was actively pushing forward the merging development of tourism and culture, and the municipal government would provide positive support on the aspects of policies and funds. Hereafter, Beijing would encourage the production of more movies with tourism themes. According to preliminary statistics, 20 movies were shown, and the audience reached 2,500 within 2 days. After watching one movie, a student of the University of International Business and Economics said that the World Tourism City Movie Show provided them with a hard-won experience. Some classical movies were hard to be found in the cinema so walking into the cinema to watch these movies fully showing the city scenes and expressing the city enchantments is an experience to appreciate cinematic elements, as well as a chance to learn about city tourism.

(III) General Assembly and Council

The General Assembly held on September 14 had discussed and passed Articles of Association of the World Tourism Cities Federation, Rules of Procedure for the World Tourism Cities Federation, Membership Rules, the official logo and flag of the Federation, signed the Beijing Declaration, and created 40 council members for the first batch, including 30 city council members and 10 non-city council members.

After the General Assembly ended, the First Session of Council of the World Tourism Cities Federation was held. The Council elected the Acting Mayor of Beijing City, Wang Anshun, as the first Chairman of the Council, commissioned the Secretary-General of WTCF, and defined the next session of the Beijing Fragrant Hills Tourism Summit of WTCF would be held in Beijing in the autumn of 2013.

(IV) World Tourism City Exposition

In the afternoon of September 14, the opening ceremony of the World Tourism City Exposition was held at Wangfujing Pedestrian Street. This was the first tourism exposition held in the area open to the public. There were 43 international and domestic city members participating in this exposition, including 23 international exhibition areas (including Macao) and 20 domestic exhibition areas.

As the Chairman of the WTCF, Acting Mayor of Beijing, Wang Anshun, witnessed the unveiling ceremony of the official logo of WTCF - "Water of Sincerity" together with representatives of city members.

The World Tourism City Exposition mainly exhibited tourism products, including city tourism advertising videos, city logos, characteristic costumes, distinctive performs, tourism souvenirs, etc. The exposition set up a voting area on the spot and organized the lottery voting activity, allowing the public and tourists to choose six favorite tourism awards. From interacting with the public, the lottery voting attracted nearly ten thousand people.

During the exposition period, six international and domestic cities participating in WTCF, including Brussels, Buenos Aires, Xi’an, Wuhan, Harbin and Luoyang, gave their respective city logos with great enthusiasm to the Federation Secretariat and Beijing Tourism Commission. In the afternoon of September 15, the organizing committee performed a handover ceremony at the place of exposition.

During the exposition period, city exhibition booths attracted over ten thousand foreign and domestic tourists to visit and consult. According to statistics, the exhibition booths gave out nearly ten thousand guidebooks, propaganda foldouts, maps, tourism souvenirs, etc. Beside the main stage area of Fountain Square, fantastic performances selected and sent by city members fascinated a large number of tourists to stop and watch.

(V) Bejing Fragrant Hills Tourism Summit

The first session of the Beijing Fragrant Hills Tourism Summit included a main forum and two special media activities. Vice Mayor of Beijing and Chairman of the meeting made a keynote speech at the main forum, and the Mayor of Dublin, the Mayor of Riga and President of America International Travel Inc. also spoke at the main forum. The two special communication activities covered two subjects: one was the tourism industry and city development, another was about communication and cooperation among tourism cities, where member representatives, experts & scholars and representatives of tourism enterprises and institutions made statements.

(VI) Inaugural Meeting

At the inaugural meeting, the member representatives placed crystal balls with names of city members and non-city members on the unveiling table, and Vice-Chairman of the CPPCC, Lin Wenyi unveiled the logo of the Federation. The meeting held a flag-raising ceremony, announced the selected person for the Council Chairman and Secretary-General, and published the Bejing Declaration as well.

(VII) Awards Night

At the night of September 15, the Awards Night of the Beijing Fragrant Hills Tourism Summit, held at Fountain Square of the Beijing Fragrant Hills Botanical Garden, conferred awards for cities of Favorite Advertising Video, Favorite City Logo, Favorite Characteristic Costume, Favorite Live Perform, Favorite Tourism Souvenir, Favorite Exhibition Booth and Ten Favorite Tourism City Foods.

When the awarding ceremony ended, some representatives of foreign city members sang and danced joyously at the square, and made an agreement to meet each other in Beijing next year.

III. Media’s Concern, Deep Influence

This meeting was strongly supported by international and domestic news media. Within this period, the News Center was bustling and astir, almost all attending city representatives, some mayors and vice mayors of domestic cities were interviewed exclusively or in group there. Over 20 central media groups, such as Xinhua News Agency, People’s Daily, China Daily, China News Agency and China Tourism, reported on this meeting, and made the prominent dispositions on show times and layout arrangements. Nearly 20 municipal press units, such as Beijing Daily, Beijing TV Station, Beijing People’s Broadcasting Station, Beijing Youth Daily, etc. sent better interview and reporter teams in succession to report on the important issues. More than ten foreign media agencies, for instance, Associated Press, Spanish International Broadcasting Station, EFE News Agency, Hong Kong Wen Wei Po, Hong Kong Ta Kong Pao, Korea KBS, Hong Kong World Economy, internet media, such as, People Daily Online, Xinhua Daily Online, China Daily Online, China News Online, Qianlong.com, etc., and media from such domestic cities as Shanghai, Wuhan, Harbin, Jiaozuo, etc. paid close attention to this meeting.

Nearly 200 foreign and domestic registered journalists directly participated in the interview and reported on this meeting, creating a strong public opinion atmosphere for the meeting, to spread the influence and propaganda of the WTCF at home and abroad.