CHINADAILY: Tourism Summit Kicks Off in Chongqing

The World Tourism Cities Federation's annual summit kicked off in Chongqing on Sept 19.

About 400 guests from 89 cities and 47 institutions worldwide gathered at the event.

"The federation was founded in 2012. With great support and joint efforts of all parties, it hascompleted all tasks for startup and achieved conspicuous results," says Wang Anshun, chairmanof the WTCF Council and mayor of Beijing.

"I believe that this year's summit will become a grand event for tourism industries with adistinctive Chongqing feature and further promote innovative development of the world tourismindustry."

Forums on shared economy, tourism promotion sessions and investment fair were held duringthe summit.

More than 20 famous tourism enterprises and related institutions from China and abroadattended the Tourism Investment Fair during the summit. Approximately 80 projects wereshowcased at the fair and intended investment is expected to hit $16 billion.

At the same time, the annual Market Research Report on Chinese Outbound Tourist (City)Consumption was unveiled at the summit.

Los Angeles and Qingdao in Shandong province were voted as host cities of 2017 and 2018summit, respectively.

During the summit, WTCF signed strategic partnership agreements with Tencent Technology,Travel Channel and iQIYI. In addition, Chongqing tourism bureau signed a MOU with WashingtonDC Tourism Bureau and Airbnb.