【Summit Senior Figures Interview】Interview with Tan Jialing, Deputy Mayor of Chongqing Municipal Government

WTCF: Please tell us why Chongqing was chosen as the venue location for the “2016 World Tourism Cities Federation Fragrant Hills Tourism Summit.”

Tan Jialing: Thanks to the World Tourism Cities Federation,Chongqing was chosen as the 2016 venue for the summit. We also believe that the summit can bring more glory toChongqing city.World Tourism Cities Federation Summit, held for the first time in a city that isn’t a capital, and held the first time in the Midwest region of China, which in itself means that Chongqing has become one of the world's most famous tourist destinations and it shows the tourism potential of the city.In addition to the China factor, beautiful natural scenery, unique culture and charming style, and the broad support from the booming economy and the public, all add toChongqing’s obvious advantages.

Firstly, from a historical point of view, Chongqing has been set as the country’s capital three times, and has hadfour majorconstructionsthroughout the history. The city is one of China's historically famous cultural city and heritage market; in addition, the city ishome to countless heroes and many historical sites that are full of ancient customs. Chongqingcourts the world's attention with its various travel options in the city.

The city has 3,000 years of unique history and culture connotation. It retained many of the 25,000 extremely valuable cultural heritage items,includingthe World Heritage Site, "Dazu Rock Carvings" which shows the charm of oriental civilization; "Aikawa fishing city" changed the world history; and most notably,during World War II, Chongqing was the command center in the Far East.

Secondly, Chongqing has a large city landscape, a total of 82,000 square kilometers of land, rivers horizons, and mountains blending the city.It has a unique world natural heritage: Jinfo Mountain and Wulong Karst Geological Park, in addition to the Three Gorges, Wujiang River Gallery and other world wonders. The city sits on various shapes of the bridges, like the natural moat into a thoroughfare.Therefore, Chongqing also enjoys the name "World Bridge Museum."

Thirdly, Chongqing is one of China's five national central cities, with many geographical advantages and owns the strategic position. It is an important fulcrum to the western development and also a junction point to the “One Belt One Road" strategy.Plus,it is a key city along Yangtze River economic belt. The city’s infrastructure includes the Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europeinternational railway in the west, Yangtze River Golden Waterway in the east,and airlines covering more than 120 cities on five continents. The western city of Chongqing is China's youngest municipality and has emerged as an important inland development center for China.

Fourthly, Chongqing has a continuous GDP growth that maintains more than 10% growth rate. It is the fastest growing city in the first ten consecutive quarters in China. The city has pillar industry development, state of modern manufacturing base, domestic functional financial center, and the National Center for Urban Construction in West innovation centers. In addition, urban and rural development takes shape, including automobiles, digital information, equipment manufacturing, consumer products and other expansion, notebook computers and other strategic emerging the rapid rise of modern service industry, financial industry and other booming new growth emerging. The city attracted nearly 300 "Fortune 500" companies to establish basesand under larger world economic pressures,presentedpositive economic development trends.

Fifthly, Chongqing is a world famous tourist city and an important tourist destination.It is the ancient capital, spa capital, bridges city,and the gastronomic capital.Chongqing has 1World Heritage Site, 2World Natural Heritage, and 198 national A-level scenic spots.The city has also opened 36 direct flights to Los Angeles, Rome, Helsinki, Sydney, Doha and Seoul. Also, visitors from The United States, Germany, France, Russia, Switzerland, Australia and other 51 countries visitors can enjoy the "72 hours transit visa."The total overseas tourists reached 390 million people. Both domestic and overseas tourists are fond of the city landscape, Chongqing nightlife, Chongqing dishes as well as the light rail, elevated bridge, and the river tankers. In recent years, Chongqing has been awarded by internationally renowned travel magazine "Frommer's" and "Lonely Planet" as "The World's Top Ten Tourist Destinations andThe World's Top Ten Most Promising Destination."Its comprehensive tourist satisfaction ranks the first one among all Chinese tourist cities.

In addition, Chongqing has the expertise to organize exhibitionsand for five consecutive years, it was named as "China Top Ten Influential Exhibition City and China's Best MICE Destination City". The city has held "AAPP AAPP,China Top 500 Enterprises Summit, West China Tourism Industry Expo” and other forums&exhibitions.The summit is to be held in Chongqing YuelaiNational Convention Centre, which is a global leader in large-scale conventions, and is theWest's largest conference venues, with a total construction area of 600,000 square meters. Itis a multi-functional complex with various services including exhibitions, conference, catering, and accommodation. Chongqing Yuelai Wyndham Hotel is aninternationally renowned hotel that has earned a five-star standard.

In short, the unique charm of the city shows friends at home and abroad that the Chongqing has tremendous appeal, whichmakes Chongqing city the right choice to host the summit in 2016. We are deeply honored and would like to express our heartfelt thanks to the Federation and its member cities for their great support!

WTCF: Please kindly introduce the current preparatory work underway in Chongqing.

Tan Jialing: Chongqing municipal government attaches great importance to the summit held in Chongqing. We see it as a major opportunity to accelerate the construction of an international tourist destination of the world,to improve the competitiveness of the city of Chongqing, its impact and visibility as an important carrier and platformto expand openness, accelerate the process of modernization and internationalization.

After the successful bid, the municipal government established the leadership and the city's upper and lower level working mechanism. We have set up a special committee and held a mobilization meeting and several conferences to develop an overall plan.

To ensure that work is completed, the municipal government has done a good job in regards to preparations for the Summit, clearing all departments and county tasks and responsibilities. And to develop a work program into nearly 30, detailed working processes, clarify working schedule, strengthen inspection to ensure that the work is processed.

During the preparations, we attach special importance to fine services and supports. We focused on different countries, different regions of the guests, in order to develop a "one to one" comprehensive and detailed program reception. We also specifically recruited hundreds of volunteers for the Summit guests with attentive and thoughtful services. Airlines, hotels, travel agencies, financial companies and other tourism industry summit will also provide quality and efficient full-services.

This time, we will take the most stringent security measures to ensure the safety of guests. Currently, attendance rate has reached 66.7%, most of which are international buyers and international investors to senior management. Senior officials from UNWTO, PATA, GTEF, WTCF and other important international organizations have confirmed their attendance. In addition,12 delegations led by the tourism city mayor or deputy mayor will also attend.

Chongqing will take this opportunity to vigorously promote the development of tourism industry.

1. To promote investment. We have pushed the successes of landscape Six Flags theme park, OCT Chongqing Wanda Culture Travel City and other tourism projects.

2. To promote the construction. Yangtze River Golden Triangle Tour started construction with an investment of 364 million yuan to promote the "Travel Toilet Revolution," and vigorously upgrade the tourist facilities.

3. To promote the service. It will improve the quality of tourism services to enhance the implementation of the project, and to strengthen the tourist destinations, scenic spots, hotels, restaurants, parking, travel agency standardized management.

4. To enhance marketing. The city has mobilized the forces and resources to create a strong atmosphere of the summit organization, three-dimensional online and offline publicity and promotion of tourism resources and specialty products.

5. To enhance the governance. It will be vigorously rectifying and standardizing the order of the tourism market, enhance the tourism business practices, and create a safe and harmonious tourist environment.

6. To promote inbound tourism. We would like to vigorously promote global tourism, to highlight the Three Gorges, Red Rock line, the spa capital,Chongqing corridor, Wujiang River Gallery, World Heritage, Old Towns, beautiful countryside and other tourist spots to attract visitors to Chongqing for sightseeing.

We attach great importance to the communications with World Tourism Cities Federation and the Federation also gave Chongqing strong guidance and support. We will also learn from Beijing, Rabat and other cities who held summit before and had valuable experience. I believe with the joints efforts from WTCF and Chongqing; we can arrange an impactful, distinctive, and high quality summit, giving domestic and foreign guests a good impression.

WTCF: You have participated in the summit held last year in Morocco.Chongqing is the first summit held in a city that isn’t a capital. What are the characteristics and highlights of this year's summit? For this year's summit held in Chongqing, what goals and expectations do you have?

Tan Jialing: Last year's summit held in Morocco, North Africa, allowed us to experience the beauty and style of a splendid civilization. It left us with a deep impression. This year's summit, held in Chongqing, will be based on the previous summit and show the unique characteristics of the city.

The summit will be milestone significance. The summit will review theglorious history and bright future prospects of the WTCF since the establishment and share the bright future prospects of the organization. It is an important event for the Federation. During the scheduled agenda, it has arranged for the transition of the World Tourism City Federation Council, the second session of the board meeting for the first time, the World Tourist City Federation member conference, announcing of the 2017 overseas host city and 2018 domestic host city, which is the first time in the WTCF’s history.

The summit is in the "Five Development Concept" held under the guidance of a tour event. Summit Forum with the theme of "Sharing Economy on Tourism Opportunities and Challenges of Urban Development," and highlighting the "Five Concept of Development" and the core requirements.The "Five Development Concept" promotes tourism development in the world and will bring a better future to world tourism industry. At the same time, the summit forum will adapt a "3 + 1" method, that is one main forum plus three sub-forums, which will have government officials, corporate executives, experts and scholars, and industry representatives from various sectors comingtogether to discuss a new model of tourism.

The summit will launch three historical breakthrough results. First, the summit will publish the World Tourism Cities Federation Chongqing Declaration and the Chongqing to Build an Internationally Renowned Tourist Destination Case Study and a series of researchdocuments. The World Tourism Cities Federation Chongqing Declaration will serve asthe World Tourism Program for action in the next five years. Secondly, the summit will set up Committee of Investment of WTCF, jointly prepared and sponsored by China Equity Investment Association (CAPE), which has more than 400 members and overRMB one trillion administer funds. CAPE will be the first to fund to the Tourism Investment Fair and deepen international cooperation in tourism. Again, the summit will discuss the progress made in the tourism business for its significant results, in which Chongqing will have 20 projects to participate in the negotiations and more than 10 projects have identified investors.

The summit will fully reflect the trends of openness, interactive, and experience. Through the "Conference + Experience" innovative ways plus the “Online + Offline”, "Land + Water" activities, the summit content will inevitably reach a new climax.At the same time, our guests will enjoy the summit tour, including experience tours andcruise trips, which will make them appreciate the beauty of Chongqing's unique landscape and cultural customs.

As the city council member of WTCF, Chongqing will be committed to the summit and make it into an event in history. Here, we sincerely issue a warm invitationto international tourism organizations and agencies, the World Tourism Cities, and World Tourism Enterprises. Welcome to Chongqing! Let us together interpret and advertise the"Better City Life through Tourism" concept and to make new contributions to the development of world tourism!

WTCF: During the summit, there will be representatives of international tourism organizations and institutions from around the world attending.Since Chongqing is World's Tourism Federation member city, what are the benefits we can gain to hold such a summit to promote the internationalization process of Chinese tourist cities? What’s the significance for promoting the sustainable development of tourism in the world?

Tan Jialing: Chongqing made tourism as a comprehensive strategic pillar industryand made the goal to accelerate the construction of well-known international tourist destination.In the next five years, Under the guidance of "Beautiful Landscape Capital · Chongqing (promotional project)", the city will be focusing on building three major international tourist destinations, four themed boutique tourist routes, four destination system, and seven international tourism brand.According to the plan, the future of Chongqing international route numbers will reach to 100. The to-be built Chongqing Jiangbei International AirportT3 terminal will allowpassenger number will reach 7 million, making Chongqing’s contact with the world more closely.

Holding such a summit can effectively promote Chongqing’s domestic and international tourism, which will enhance the domestic and international exchanges and cooperation between tourism enterprises and international tourism organizations and institutions.

World Tourism Cities Federation has 109 city members, including the major domestic and international tourist destination cities. Through the organization of the summit, members can effectively promote exchanges between cities for the world to understand Chinese tourist cities. And it will allowtourist cities in China he opportunity tobetter understand the world tourist cities in order to build a two-way communication platform. Through the organization of the summit, the World Tourism can not only promote more Chinese enterprises to seek business opportunities, open up to the vast Chinese market, especially in central and western China, to allow more foreign tourists to visit China, but also for the more Chinese tourist cities, Tourism enterprises to go abroad to provide support, allowing more Chinese tourists learn about a foreign tourist city. It will allow Chinese tourism cities and the world tourism industry to better integrate into the global tourism, which enhances their level of internationalization.

"Sharing" is the key to the world's sustainable and healthy development of the tourism industry. By "sharing", it can effectively mobilize the world of tourism resources, and to achieve optimal allocation of resource elements.

Through the organization of the summit, it can effectively promote greater understanding between the World Tourism Cities, deepen cooperation and realize the sharing of resources among the world tourist cities, to complementary advantages, mutual benefit, boost world tourism including Chongqing tourism, and China's tourism industry. All above can forward through the development of tourism, promote the integration of industrial development, and promote the healthy and sustainable development of the whole economy.As a member of the World Federation of Municipalities tourist city, Chongqing will continue to support the summit to be held, to contribute to the development of China's tourism industry and the world of tourism!

WTCF: Anything else you would like to add?

Tan Jialing: 2016 World Tourism Cities Federation Chongqing Fragrant HillsTourism Summit will be held during the autumn season during September 18-22. Here, we once again invite everyone to Chongqing. We are ready, and we will offer the next safe, efficient, and unique tourist event. Let us set out together to experience the charm of Chongqing, and to share the vitality of Chongqing!

Thank you!