The First China Tourism Public Opinion (Fragrant Hills) Summit Kicks off in Beijing: Develop Professional Public Opinion Management Strategies, and Boost Tourism Industry Innovation

On November 16th, with the theme of “Vision Expansion • Pattern Breaking • Future Anticipation”, the First China Tourism Public Opinion (Fragrant Hills) Summit was jointly held by the Culture and Tourism Professional Committee of China Culture Administration Association and Public Opinion Monitoring Office of People.com.cn. Those who attended the summit include Li Xiaolei, Vice Chairman of the China Culture Administration Association; Shang Shenglong, Deputy Director of the Comprehensive Coordination Division of China National Tourism Administration; Zhu Shouchen, former Secretary of All-China Journalists Association’s Secretariat; Yan Han, Deputy Secretary-General of WTCF, tourism professionals, renowned scholar think-tanks, tourism companies, and media representatives. They shared research results of the new opportunities of the tourism industrial development, the integrity and innovative development, and the public opinion of tourism.

The First China Tourism Public Opinion (Fragrant Hills) Summit was held in Beijing

Shang Shenglong, Deputy Director of the Comprehensive Coordination Division of China National Tourism Administration, delivers a speech to start off the summit

The Improvement of Public Opinion Quality Is Impending, Consolidate the Development Result of "Comprehensive Tourism"

At the summit, Shang Shenglong, Deputy Director of the Comprehensive Coordination Division of the China National Tourism Administration, delivered a speech and highly appreciated the significance of the summit. He said that under the guidance of the “Comprehensive Tourism” concept, the tourism industry has become a strategic industry for the people’s economic development upgrading and structure transformation. At the same time, negative public opinions also keep coming up. According to the current conditions, travel destinations are also troubled by a series of problems such as public opinion management, publicity strategies lacking the macro view of dealing with problems, weak public opinions in leading brand building, and so on. The supervision departments of tourist destinations should specially realize that public opinion of tourism management not only measures crisis and problems, but it also has a positive influence on comprehensive tourism planning and development and it works to adjust the shaping of city images.

Li Xiaolei, Vice Chairman of China Culture Administration Association, delivers a speech

Make Full Use of the Combination of "Tourism + Culture", Release Positive Energy

Li Xiaolei, Vice Chairman of China Culture Administration Association, said that the public opinion has generated positive effects and become more valuable in the combined development between culture and tourism. He said that the crisis management and publicity-oriented roles of tourism public opinion management and the export and spreading of culture, plays an irreplaceable role in boosting the upgrading and transformation of the tourism industry and shaping the city brand and image.

Zhu Shouchen, former Secretary of the Secretariat of the All-China Journalists Association, delivers a speech

Zhu Shouchen, former Secretary of All-China Journalists Association’s Secretariat, said that the function of public opinion management in social governance becomes more and more obvious, and effectively dealing with public opinions is important for the healthy development of the tourism industry. Currently, managers working in tourist destinations, companies and related institutions do not have much experience in the current requirements of development. It is impending to entirely improve the quality of public opinion management.

WTCF Deputy Sectary-General Yan Han delivers a speech

To fully utilize interpersonal transmission, tourist destinations need to establish favorable interactive relations

As Chinese outbound tourists’ and consumption ability dramatically grow, the public opinion requirements for tourists and tourist destinations increase day by day. The tourism industry not only needs to satisfy the public’s wish of living a happy life, but it also needs to strengthen the soft power of China. Therefore, WTCF Secretary-General Yan Han said, “Tourism has further spread and promoted Chinese culture.” Tourism itself functions to transmit information. When facing a new environment and new information, tourists will think and become information producers and communicators, and will further enter the process of shaping tourism brands.

At present, tourist destinations need to establish favorable interactive relations with the outside world, namely “Gather public opinions in daily life, research and judge public opinions during emergent conditions, guide public opinions in critical conditions, and cope with and influence public opinions after each event”. Meanwhile, tourist destinations also hope to further collaborate with the media on brand promotion and during the process of marketing, for they hope to generate favorable public opinion, reports on active popular events, public opinion collection, work performance profits, and other profound and comprehensive brand management effects. He thinks, “Tourist destinations need to design channels to market themselves in their destinations and also market themselves outside of their destinations.”

Sun Yu, former Deputy Chief of the Public Opinion Bureau of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China, delivers a keynote speech

Strengthen the Combined Power of Convergence Media, Shape Upgraded Tourism Brands

At the summit, Sun Yu, former Deputy Chief of the Public Opinion Bureau of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China, delivered a keynote speech with the theme of “Build the Combined Power of the Convergence Media of China Tourism Public Opinion”. He thinks that public opinion of tourism can be understood as the “public opinion of society” of the tourism industry; properly dealing with public opinion of tourism will become a backbone power in shaping and sustaining tourism brands, and improperly dealing with it can also cause the tourism economic development of tourist destinations lag behind.

Sun Yu said that today’s information and technology sector keeps upgrading increasingly and media convergence is strengthening, and the “Comprehensive Tourism” development strategy enhances the added value of the tourism industrial integrity day by day. If we want to actively cater for and implement the “Comprehensive Tourism” and “Tourism+” development strategies, improve the brand images of tourist destinations, expand the space of tourism development, push forward the upgrading and structure transformation of tourism development, we must build the combined power of convergence media of China’s tourism public opinion. When analyzing the “An Oriental Journey” project as a typical case, he proposed two specific suggestions for practice: collect media resources and further enhance the positive value of tourism public opinions; and embark on setting up a gathering and analysis mechanism for tourism public opinions, and improve our understanding of the public’s opinion on tourism status and our abilities to deal with it.

Lately, as the tourism industry is booming, the developmental strategies of tourist destinations cannot ignore the influence of public opinion. According to the tourism industrial status with the “Comprehensive Tourism” theory as its background, public opinion of tourism covers many different fields such as tourism resources, policy and law, ecological condition, public service, civilized manners, related industries and so on. It is also more related to tourist destinations’ management elements including dining, accommodation, transportation, toilet qualities, travel, shopping, entertainment, popular travel events, topics, etc. Therefore, in the process of the tourism industrial transformation, we not only need to pay much attention to the further exploration and consolidation of the tourism market, but we also need to comprehensively build systematic and professional public opinion management strategies, so that we can improve our guiding power of the public’s opinion and brand reputation levels, and strengthen brand competitiveness. The successful holding of this summit provides new management ideas for tourist destinations and companies, and refreshes our understanding of the power of public opinion on tourism, and it is also significant to boost the development of China’s tourism industry. It also provides a macro view of comprehensive development for the tourism industry, and a brand new realization that tourism companies can surpass time and space.