UNWTO – WTCF City Tourism Performance Research Workshop Launches in Tianjin

On September 2, the UNWTO – World Tourism Cities Federation (WTCF) City Tourism Performance Research Workshop was launched in Tianjin Meijiang Convention Center, from a joint effort of UNWTO, WTCF and Tianjin Tourism Administration. The research was conducted by a dozen of experts from Chinese cities including Beijing, Hangzhou and Macau, and from the UK, Japan and Korea. Mr. Yan Han, Deputy Secretary-General of WTCF; Ms. Esencan Terzibasoglu, UNWTO Program Director Destination Management and Quality; Dr. Roger Carter, Vice Director of the WTCF Expert Committee; and Prof. Song Rui from CASS were invited to attend the Workshop.

At the Forum

City tourism has been considered as a powerful engine for the local economic development of cities by creating job opportunities, increasing foreign currency revenue along with its contribution to GDP and services exports. It is essential to monitor city tourism performance and to find the areas for improvement for each individual city. To this end, UNWTO and WTCF jointly launched “City Tourism Performance Research” in 2015, an instrument with a set of criteria that can be used globally to benchmark tourism performance and streamline the decision-making process for policy makers. Over the two years, 16 cities across the world were selected for their favorable performance. With a clear objective and with a standardized survey process, which includes data collection, field research, and tourism development experience, a comprehensive list of performance criteria that can be used worldwide, which has a link to policy making, has been built. Cases of tourism performance studies in Tianjin, Beijing, Hangzhou, Tokyo, and Sapporo were discussed at this Workshop.

Tourism Experts attended the event

In a speech delivered at the Opening Ceremony, Yan Han, Deputy Secretary-General of WTCF, said that over the past 6 years, guided by its core vision of “Better City Life through Tourism”, WTCF had committed itself to the sustainable development of cities, creating a better link between cities and organizations, and promoting prosperity of tourist destinations. Destination development and the tourism industry were at the top of the agenda of WTCF over the past 6 years, during which, consecutive surveys of tourism performance and researches on the evaluation standards of a city brand were conducted on a regular basis.

Yan Han, Deputy Secretary-General of WTCF, delivered a speech at the opening ceremony

UNWTO and WTCF, bounded by their deep sense of duty as well as a common interest, strive to upgrade the tourism industry by conducting quality research on city tourism performance and its impact.

The objective of this global research includes, but is not limited to, measuring and benchmarking the performance of cities, improving the tourism performance of individual cities, and enhancing mutual understanding of cities involved in the initiative. It is hoped that a partnership characterized by mutual learning, mutual exchanges, and cooperation between cities will be forged through this joint endeavor.

Song Rui, Member of the WTCF Expert Committee and Director of Tourism Research Center of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), presents her research on the tourism performance of Beijing.

Roger Carter, Vice Director of the WTCF Expert Committee, presents his research on the tourism performance of Tianjin and moderated the panel discussion.