Cultural Tourism文旅产业
Edited by Li Zhuoxi
Cultural tourism is a rising industry in China. Nowadays, the rapid development of China’s tourism has already become the focus of attention from home and abroad. In 2015, China led the world in both outbound and inbound tourism in terms of tourist flow and money spent domestically and internationally.
Cultural tourism, as an important piece of the tourism industry, is becoming a new engine for China’s economic growth against the backdrop of China’s “new normal,” pushed by the country’s huge consumption market and guided by preferable macropolicy. Amidst economic recession in the Asia-Pacific region, cultural tourism is positioned to inject new energy into the area’s economic development.
According to recent statistics from the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), the Asia-Pacific region took the lead in terms of the tourist generating market, and remained the second most-visited area in the world. In 2015, Chinese people traveling overseas spent a total of US$215 billion, an increase of 53 percent year on year. According to WTTC, as China’s outbound tourism industry flourishes, the country has become the world’s second largest travel and tourism economy after the U.S. It is expected that in the next ten years, the country’s tourism industry will grow at an annual rate of 7 percent, far more than the world’s rate of 4 percent, and will surpass the U.S. by 2024.
Domestically, with the arrival of the mass tourism era, the modern service industry with cultural tourism as a major piece, has dominated a large share of China’s national economy.
On September 25, 2014, the China National Tourism Administration issued a list of 135 excellent tourism projects that year. More than 80 percent of projects on the list are related to cultural tourism. In some more developed Chinese cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, the rate is almost 100 percent. Nowadays, the country’s cultural tourism is no longer only about exploring existing cultural resources, but rather creating and producing resources for cultural tourism. Compared to existing cultural resources, the emerging new resources for cultural tourism feature technology, cultural diversity, and more eye-catching appearances.
April 16, 2016, Nandan County, Guangxi: At a local tea culture festival, many kids and their parents visit tea gardens to better understand China’s time-honored tea culture. Pictured is Bo Lu (right) from Nandan No. 2 Elementary School picking tea leaves with a tourist. by Gao Dongfeng and Huang Shangbiao/CFP