China's "Year of Silk Road Tourism 2016" Highlights at ITB Berlin

On March 9, the 50th International Tourism Exchange Berlin (ITB) kicked off. Chinese exhibitors gathered to promote the rich tourism resources and characteristic tourism products of China under the theme "Beautiful China -- Year of Silk Road Tourism 2016."

The Chinese exhibitors were led by China National Tourism Administration to attend the exhibition; tourism bureaus and enterprises from 17 Chinese provinces and cities such as Beijing, Tianjin, Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, Yunnan, Tibet and Xinjiang attended. The brand new Chinese exhibition booth tried to present a colorful and splendid China to visitors through multi-screen television walls, brightly colored posters and elaborately prepared promotion materials.

At the exhibition, many people in the tourism industry showed strong interests in Xinjiang. Zang Bing, Vice General Manager of Urumchi Overseas International Travel Agency said that as an important stop on the Silk Road, Xinjiang embraces rich tourism resources like deserts, oasis, glaciers, and grasslands, and it will be a waste of Xinjiang’s tourism resources if we do not endeavor to promote it.

According to Shi Xiang, Director of China National Tourism Administration Office in Frankfurt, China attaches great importance to the development of tourism. Compared with the the over 20% annual growth of outbound tourism, inbound tourism’s growth is relatively slow. To cope with this situation, China National Tourism Administration is striving to boost inbound tourism through market development, publicity and promotion, holding foreign tourism business conferences in China and promoting exchanges among senior executives etc.

ITB is one of the world's largest exhibitions of tourism. ITB Berlin 2016 will last to March 13 and is expected to attract some around 10,000 exhibitors from 187 countries and regions.