On-the-spot Report of the First International Tourist Destination (Cities) Promotion and Marketing Training Program

In the first day’s training, the teachers participating in the training were He Shengkang, Song Rui and Zou Tongqian. They had discussion and exchanges with the trainees about the reception of Chinese tourists, prospects for the development of China's outbound tourism market and characteristics of Chinese tourist groups.

In the morning the first lecture was given by He Shengkang, Counselor of World Tourism Cities Federation (WTCF) Secretariat. The topic of He Shengkang’s lecture was how to do a good job in the reception of Chinese tourists. Mr. He's lecture was both humorous and detailed in data; combining his life working experience, he presented sufficient cases as arguments, and made a vivid description and summary on how to do a good job in the reception of Chinese tourists.

The lecturing topic of Song Rui, Researcher of the Institute of Finance and Trade and Director of the Tourism Research Center, Chinese Academy of Social Science (CASS) was China's tourism in the global perspective. She analyzed China's outbound tourism market development and pointed out the development prospects of China's outbound tourism market combining the development trend of the world tourism industry, which was comprehensive, rigorous, meticulous and objective, covering both macro-level view and micro-level cases.

The lecture in the afternoon was given by Zou Tongqian, President of School of Tourism Management, Beijing International Studies University (BISU). He vividly analyzed the development trend of China's outbound tourism market and the Chinese tourists’ consumption patterns and shared his original analysis of the characteristics of Chinese tourist groups.

Lectures by the three teachers all gained a very good response. Kouassi Camille, Counselor of the Embassy of the Republic of Cote d’Ivoire in China said he felt very pleasantly surprised and satisfyed toward Chinese scholars’ open international vision and superb academic standards and he looked forward to the courses of the next few days. Janko from Belgrade, one of the trainees, came to China for the first time, and he expressed that he cherishes the opportunity to learning very much, the teachers’ lectures are very helpful to him and he is now full of good impressions on China. Janko sincerely hopes to enhance the understanding of Chinese culture and tourism market through the learning and exchanges.

On the afternoon of the same day, three media members of WTCF, Sina.com, Tencent and Travel Geography Magazine were invited to introduce for the trainees the value of traditional media, the present development situation of China's Internet and the service condition of Weibo, one of the social media in China, and expound the promotion strategies of destination cities toward Chinese tourists making use of new media. According to statistics, as of September 30, 2015, the number of monthly active users of Weibo has reached 212 million, and to the end of the first quarter of 2016, WeChat monthly active users has reached 549 million. The influence of Weibo and WeChat in the tourism industry is growing, and to do a good job of destination marketing with the use of network platform is an important topic in the network era.

On the night of the same day, some WTCF media branch members also took advantage of the dinner time to make face to face communication with member cities present; in a warm discussion atmosphere, they promoted their own media resources and offered advices and suggestions for member cities’ promotion in China.