Dai Bin, President of China Tourism Academy Releases Annual Report on Development of World Tourism Cities (2016)

[17:10]Distinguished ladies and gentlemen,

[17:10]Today we hold the grand rally and release of the Annual Report on Development of World Tourism Cities (2016), only aimed to state an obvious fact that cities in the world tourism economic pattern are playing a more and more important role and have a more and more critical function.

[17:10]Cities have contributed the majority of tourist source and consumption to the world tourism economy.

[17:11]According to global statistics, more than 50% of people make a living and reside in cities. Among the developed economic entities with OECD as the representative, this proportion is even higher, usually over 80%. With the high concentration of population size and cutting-edge consumption standard, cities constantly transport tourists to the global tourism market and become the indicator that leads tourism consumption. In 2015, China’s domestic tourist market achieved 4 billion total trips. Among the trip takers, 70.3% are urban residents. The domestic tourism revenue was 3.42 trillion RMB, with 80.7% contributed by tourists from cities. Statistics show that cities are the most important market base of tourism economic operation, viewed both from the angle of tourist source and from the angle of tourism consumption.

[17:12]A city is the final destination for travellers. In the time when sightseeing leads the trend, cities are important nodes of national standard tourist destinations. Just like the time after the Revolution and Opening up of the last century in China, inbound tourists preferred the “Beijing-Xi’an-Shanghai-Guilin-Guangzhou” route, which was created because the cities served as nodes and were connected. Today, when tourists’ aims of travelling are increasingly evolving from sightseeing to leisure and highlighting personal experiences, the role of cities as independent tourist destinations becomes more and more prominent. According to the specific data jointly released by China Tourism Academy, Ctrip, and UnionPay International, the daily behavior of city tourists is changing from “buy” to “slow.” More and more tourists are willing to stay in one city on a single trip, slowly savoring the daily lifestyle of the citizens and experiencing the local culture. Adapting to this change, we have found that more and more cities have begun to build, administrate, and promote themselves as independent destinations.

[17:13]Cities have been playing the key role of being transportation hubs and transfer stations for passengers. Without cities’ airports, wharves, railway stations, expressway links and other transportation infrastructure, long-distance travel routes would materialize. If we want to fly from Beijing to South America, we usually choose Dubai, Frankfurt, London, Paris and other cities as a layover. Many airports will evolve into airport cities which serve as transportation hubs and have living functions from transportation infrastructure, and will develop an “airport economy” with the airport as the center. In fact, only cities can provide various infrastructure investments and operation and maintenance for various transportation enterprises.

[17:15]Suppose, if we had to take out cities from the map of the world tourism development, the largest industry of the world would lose the source of life. It is time that we should salute cities in the name of tourism! Let’s go back in time. Beijing launched and founded the World Tourism Cities Federation (WTCF) in September, 2012, which can be regarded as one born in the golden time and having experienced the prosperity of it.

[17:16]Ladies and gentlemen, today, city tourism has also experienced some changes worthy of our attention, or we can say that some brand new evolution trends have appeared.

[17:16]No matter if it is in China or outside China, the phenomenon that cities themselves turn into destinations and tourist source exchange is becoming more and more prominent. Neighboring countries usually turn into tourist sources and destinations of each other, such as the United States and Canada, and European countries. So do cities. For example, Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Guangzhou are basic tourist source markets of one another. In the traditional tourism development theory and explanation frame, more tourist source moves from developed economic entities to less developed regions or somewhat like the rich visit the poor as guests. But if today’s tourism flow condition is concerned, either from developed economic entities or from developing economic entities, more tourist source flows to the tourist destinations of developed countries and regions. Interestingly, rural residents consume an amount even more in cities than that urban residents consume in rural areas. Or perhaps we can explain this through lifestyle change and travel experience. This means, after tourism evolved from sightseeing to leisure, lifestyle and business environment have turned into the more important reasons for tourists to choose destinations and make consumption decisions. Cities that integrate economies of density, economies of scale and consumption capacity, modern lifestyle and internalized business environment are more likely to become the first choice for tourists traveling around the world.

[17:17]In the national tourism development strategy system, the driving force of the city to the surrounding villages turns prominent day by day. Referring to the footprints of inbound tourists, tourists usually fly to the central city, then reach the surrounding cities by regional plane or intercity train and finally arrive in villages by bus or other methods of transportation. Tourists are like a river, running from the mainstream to its branches and then to little streams. With the cooperation of all kinds of transportation facilities, cities’ influence and infiltration are becoming stronger and stronger. The tourism industry has obviously generated the spillover effect. The influenced area has far more surpassed the borders of cities, and its effect on regional integration, urban and rural coordination and other aspects gradually become obvious. Among the cities that rank top three in the World Tourism Cities Development Index, the inbound tourists of New York account for 16% of all inbound tourists of the United States, the inbound tourists of Paris account for about 18% of France’s, and the inbound tourists of London over 50% of the UK’s. Paying attention to cities is paying attention to countries. This judgment is gradually becoming common sense.

[17:18]Cities also play the key role of interconnection and intercommunication. In China’s “Belt and Road” international cooperation strategy, the pioneering of tourism cooperation is based on the communication networks among the cities of the world, especially based on the investments of harbors, wharves, railways and highways, telecommunication and communication infrastructures, and the perfection of the system. Tourism boosts the people and capital transactions and the industrial cooperation between cities, and provides the indispensable tourist flow and consumption support for the efficiency implementation of the aforementioned infrastructure. So far, the intercity communication in the world has basically taken into form. In the process, WTCF serves as an important booster.

[17:20]We have also noticed the multiple challenges city tourism development faces which is generated from consumption concept, economic development and social changes.

[17:20]In the view of consumption, tourists’ judgment of a mature destination doesn’t only rely on the abundance and features of traditional scenic areas, but it also emphasizes the reception environment of the destination city. To build cities’ tourist destinations, we shouldn’t only focus on developing and maintaining scenic areas, but we should also work on city destinations. China first launched and practiced the “region-based tourism” concept, which, in fact, sees an administrative region as a scenic area. Many cities haven’t noticed this change yet. It is obviously unreasonable to continuously build and manage the reception system with conservative ideas, when facing the dynamic personal experience requirements of individual tourists and the collaborative requirements of the economic and social development system.

[17:22]With the development of the tourist industry, nations and regions have proposed more responsibilities and higher expectations for city tourism. The innovative development of the tourism industry has brought profits to the progress of cities, and has an irreplaceable function especially on reducing unemployment, improving community environment and infrastructure and other aspects. In the process, cities’ tourism development is still at the critical moment of the transition of the old and new driving forces. Cities already have all the factors the innovative development requires including the tourism industry, especially factors such as science and technology, cultural innovation, capital, talents and so on. These factors are gradually replacing traditional natural resources and historical and cultural resources and becoming the brand new driving force of modern tourism development. The representative enterprises of shared economy like Airbnb, Uber, Ctrip, Tujia, Mafengwo.com and others all started from and developed in cities. Some luxurious clothing and cosmetics brands can branch off to hotels; bicycles and broadcasting stations have been revitalized because of tourism innovation. In the inclusive and innovative system of cities, customer flow can completely convert into the driving force of cross-boundary development. Compared with the strategic system of the high standard national tourist destination development, cities’ tourism development should strongly emphasize the leading role of the market. I have noticed that WTCF not only positively recruits city members but also works hard to recruit institutional members. This is very good.

[17:25]Ladies and gentlemen,

[17:25]We hope that all nations of the world will stress the important role of cities and allocate the role of strategic support to them. Concerning city tourism development, we should search for outstanding models based on quantitative analysis and provide samples to gain the experience of mutual communication and learning. By taking advantage of the previous research results, China Tourism Academy has built up the evaluation system of world tourism cities development and systematically analyzed 104 sample cities. The research result shows that cities with better infrastructure and a higher reputation received better evaluation results for their tourism development, such as London, New York, Paris etc. Not all cities are the same, and every city has their own comparative advantages. We have also noticed that although the comprehensive ranking is not in the first place, its tourism development prospect index ranks the first. It is the same that the Tourism Development Environment Index of Singapore is among the top in rankings. Although Buenos Aires enjoys a higher reputation, it needs to make improvements on its tourism development environment including policy, the degree of opening up, and talent support. If more effective efforts can be made to the tourism development infrastructure, we can expect that the comprehensive ranking of Ho Chi Minh City can continuously move forward. Speaking of cities with higher comprehensive rankings or higher individual rankings, we need to learn from their good experiences, exerting to avoid making mistakes to make up for the disadvantages of cities’ tourism development.

[17:27]We hope cities and tourism take the path of merging with each other, working hard to make possible the integration of internationalization and localization. The infrastructure of a city should serve the local citizens first and then tourists from outside. The development of shared economy, taking advantage of the infrastructure-to-superstructure method, publicizes resources at different times to tourists. In urban development planning, we need to coordinate the requirements of different principal parts, through macro perspective and microscopic perception angles, striving to build the shared living space for local residents and tourists from outside. We should underline the unique features of tourist destinations regarding natural resources, history and culture and lifestyle, and also pay attention to and highlight the modernity of business environments and service functions. Public and private sectors need to facilitate more communication and consultation. If a destination’s promotion agencies, city administrative departments, and travel agencies and hotels and other commercial organizations hold different views, stop communicating with each other or even conflict with each other, city tourism will not have sustainable development.

[17:29]We are in a time of prosperous development in the tourism industry, and also in a period of new trade protectionism and a contest of globalization and localization. We also face a series of challenges such as terrorism, public health incidents, transportation safety, exchange rate changes and so on. We need consensus and to join force regarding city tourism badly. We need to attach importance to and strengthen the construction of modern tourism development theory and boost the new consensus of tourism ideas. We should have confidence in and keep an optimistic view about cities and tourism. No matter how the world changes, tourism always makes city life better!

Dai Bin, President of China Tourism Academy Releases Annual Report on Development of World Tourism Cities (2016)