The Information Office of Shanghai Municipality held a press conference today (September 6), during which Director of the Shanghai Municipal Tourism Administration Xu Weiwan introduced the document of “Several Opinions on the Acceleration of High Quality Growth of Shanghai’s Tourism Industry to Make Shanghai a Globally Known Tourism City” and the preparations for the Shanghai Tourism Festival. Deputy Director of the Shanghai Municipal Tourism Administration was also present at the conference to take questions from reporters.

(Part One)

Tourism is a pillar industry for Shanghai’s economy and is connected closely with the happiness of Shanghai residents. It serves as an important part to build Shanghai’s “Four Brands” and is also a strong support to lift the city’s capacity and competitiveness. In recent years, Shanghai’s tourism industry has presented a stable and relatively fast growth, but it still needs further improvement and more innovation in comparison with the highest international standard. To accommodate to the demand of developing tourism industry in the new era, Shanghai has compiled the document of “Several Opinions on the Acceleration of High Quality Growth of Shanghai’s Tourism Industry to Make Shanghai a Globally Known Tourism City” after a city-wide investigation to find out key difficulties and problems during Shanghai’s development of its tourism industry and after hearing suggestions from all relevant parties. It makes the principle, target, mission and measures clear of how Shanghai should accelerate the development of its tourism industry in the future. The “Opinions” suggest that Shanghai should fully implement an all-around tourism development strategy to accelerate the supply-side reform of tourism. It can amplify the comprehensive influence of tourism industry, strengthen high quality growth of Shanghai tourism and accelerate the city’s construction as a globally known tourism city.

The “Opinions” are made up of 30 measures covering six aspects, namely, general requirement, the construction of a more attractive tourism destination, the acceleration of Shanghai’s tourism upgrading, the optimization of the city’s tourism environment, the enhancement of the impact of Shanghai’s tourism industry and related measures. (They are named “Shanghai tourism 30 measures.”)

Under the general requirements, the Opinions emphasizes on five areas. The Opinions emphasizes the importance of global standard and radiation areas; the importance of tourism, integration and innovation; government guidance and market leadership; the three orientations in order to serve the people's livelihood; the characteristics and high-quality tourism. The Opinions also propose two goals in different phases. By 2020, the number of domestic tourists will reach 360 million, the number of inbound tourists will reach 10 million, the total tourism revenue will exceed 600 billion yuan and added value of tourism industry will account for around 7 percent of the city's GDP. By 2035, the number of inbound tourists will reach 14 million, making Shanghai a Globally Known Tourism City.

In order to turn Shanghai into a more attractive tourist destination, the Opinions clarify five key tasks. First, Shanghai will carry out the cityscape integration of the whole tourism work. Through the beautification of urban landscape system, the city is going to set up public scenic spots to create a cityscape integration pattern. Second, the city will create a world-class tourism boutique named Huangpu River tour, in order to promote the development of waterfront, enrich the cruise lines, optimize the coastal landscape, improve the supporting facilities and build the Huangpu River tour into a must see tour for both domestic and foreign tourists. Third, the city is going to build a number of tourist routes with architecture buildings and set up a QR code system for guidance of tourists. The city will try to combine these tourist routes with experience of Shanghai history and culture. Fourth, the city will establish a group of leisure and holiday destinations such as Shanghai International Tourism and Resorts Zone, in order to promote the improvement of the Shanghai Disney Resort and its surrounding supporting facilities, optimize the overall planning and industrial structure of the Shanghai Sheshan National Tourist Resort, improve the development quality of the country park and host more activities for citizens. Fifth, the city is going to improve the quality of rural tourism, promote the construction of Chongming Eco-Island and create a number of tourism and leisure towns.

In order to promote the transformation and upgrade of Shanghai tourism, the Opinions focused on four brands and implement the tourism plus concept and promote the development of tourism integration in six aspects. First, Shanghai is going to speed up development to become an international cultural and tourism capital, create a number of red tourism boutiques, launch a number of high-end tourism performance projects, enhance the influence of tourism festivals, top cultural and sports activities as well as integrate resources of museums, science and technology museums and art galleries. Second, Shanghai is going to turn itself into an international shopping and tourism city. The city will reshape, enhance and cultivate a number of shopping and tourism experience areas, develop a number of well-known tourism products and improve the convenience of shopping and tourism. Third, the city will turn itself into a world-class cruise tourism city, accelerate the innovation of cruise tourism products, optimize the tourism and leisure facilities and landscape around the port, expand the scale of cruise tourism and extend the industry chain of cruise tourism. Fourth, the city will turn itself into an international exhibition tourism city. Shanghai will host China International Import Expo and other important exhibitions, accelerate the development of exhibition tourism and further promote the international conference and business travel. Fifth, the city is going to turn itself into an international health tourism city, enrich health tourism products and accelerate the development of health tourism service clusters. Sixth, Shanghai is going to become a national tourism demonstration city. The city will keep modern industrial heritage and allocate modern industrial resources, cultivate a number of industrial tourism demonstration sites and promote the development of Shanghai brands.

To create a good tourism environment, the Opinions proposes to optimize and upgrade services from four aspects. Firstly, the city should further improve its level of public services for the tourism industry by improving the accessibility of tourism transportation, the convenience of public services and the internationalization of the service environment. Secondly, Shanghai should promote its level of being a smart tourism city by launching the mobile application named "Shanghai Quality Life" and promoting the informatization and digitalization of major scenic spots and tourist public spaces. Thirdly, the city should deepen its reform of simplifying administration and optimizing services, promote the convenience service project for the public, strengthen the research on tourism big data, improve the tourism policy system and optimize the tourism business environment. Fourthly, Shanghai should establish a coordinated and efficient tourism comprehensive supervision system, improve the tourism complaint handling mechanism on the level of the city and its affiliated districts, and promote the construction of social credit system in the tourism industry.

To improve the radiation power of Shanghai's tourism, the Opinions propose to focus on five aspects of work. Firstly, the city should vigorously promote the development of tourism integration in the Yangtze River Delta and achieve in-depth cooperation between Shanghai and Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui Province in tourism planning, product development and marketing. Secondly, Shanghai should give full play to its role of being the leading city in the Yangtze River economic belt, promote the integration of tourism industry, co-construction of products, and mutual delivery of tourists, and improve the level of tourism cooperation. Thirdly, Shanghai should build itself to become an important tourism hub city along the "Belt and Road Initiative" by promoting tourism investment and service trade facilitation and building international tourism cooperation mechanisms and platforms. Fourthly, the city should establish a tourism image marking system, increase its publicity and promotion efforts, and enhance the international influence of Shanghai’s tourism industry. Fifthly, the city should enhance the international competitiveness of its tourism industry, upgrade the traditional tourism industry, cultivate leading tourism enterprises, support the development of new tourism formats and create an economic platform for tourism.

As tourism industry involves comprehensive and systematic work, the Opinions put forward in the last part seven safeguard measures such as strengthening organization and leadership, increasing financial and fiscal support, improving support for tourism land, promoting the healthy development of bed and breakfast, improving the convenience of inbound tourism, strengthening talent support, improving tourism statistics and assessment.

Here are some key measures:

Make innovations for tourism investment and financing mechanisms, improving financial insurance services, and improving the level of asset securitization for tourism projects;

Strengthen the land security for leisure agriculture and rural tourism, explore the compound utilization of agricultural land and tourism, and implement " spot" land supply if the rural tourism projects and service facilities conform to the relevant planning;

Promote the healthy development of the city’s rural bed and breakfast industry by optimizing license management and strengthening land security;

Strengthen the development of inbound tourism market, study and launch a package of measures to facilitate inbound tourism visa;

Establish a more scientific tourism statistics system and scientifically evaluate the quality and benefits of tourism development.

The municipal government and relevant departments will also issue relevant documents in the near future on promoting the development of rural lodging industry, cruise economy and inbound tourism.

（Part Ⅱ）

The 2018 Shanghai Tourism Festival, co-organized by the Shanghai Tourism Administration, the Shanghai Commission of Commerce and the Shanghai Administration of Culture, Radio, Film & TV, will be held from September 15 to October 6 this year.

1. Basic information

The 2018 Shanghai Tourism Festival is an important tourism festival held in the context of the in-depth implementation of the spirit of the 19th Party Congress, the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening-up and Shanghai's all-out preparations for the first China International Import Expo. The festival this year will last for 22 days, covering 16 districts of the city, with 74 activities of seven major sections which are the opening and closing ceremonies, helping promote the four Shanghai Brands, Huangpu River tour, cruise tourism, rural tourism and B&B experience, promoting the integration of tourism in the Yangtze River Delta, and "Shanghai citizens' Travel in Shanghai". The activities cover six major tourism elements of food, housing, traveling, sightseeing, shopping and entertainment, spanning many industries such as culture, commerce, sports, agriculture and industry.

The opening ceremony of the Tourism Festival and the opening of the Grand Parade will be held on Huaihai Middle Road on the evening of September 15. A total of 38 performance teams and 25 floats from 26 countries and regions will bring their amazing performances one by one. The overseas participants are expected to exceed 1,300, increasing significantly compared with previous years. The closing event will be held in the Disney Town on the evening of October 6.

2. Major activity schedule

(1) Pay attention to the benefit of people, hold the "Shanghai citizens' Travel in Shanghai" activity. From September 15 to 21, half price tickets will be offered for the Shanghai Tourism Festival scenic spots, covering 75 major scenic spots in the city, up by about 10 percent compared with last year. Among them, Huangpu River Tour and Shanghai Disneyland will join for their first time.

In order to improve the quality of rural tourism, Shanghai will hold activities such as "Search for and explore the most beautiful towns" and "Country Bed & Breakfast Experience Week" to guide the citizens to experience the beauty of the suburbs and the natural leisure.

At the same time, the city will organize a hundred popular travelers to visit Shanghai, and use their personal experience and extensive dissemination to attract more Shanghainese to make tours in Shanghai. It will also organize the an online activity jointly with Xinhua.com and JD.com, making use of network technology and various online activities to enhance the interaction and participation of citizens.

(2) Advocate street strolling, and launch “Read Shanghai” – casual tourism activities. Persist in pushing forward “Readable Architectures”, focus on “reading architectures”, and introduce the citizens and tourists to the fashion of walking to savor the charm of Shanghai’s architectures. The tourism activities will be implemented along seven streets, namely, Huangpu: the Journey of Architectural Art in the Bund; Pudong: Encounter•from Serenity to Bustle; Jing’an: Dream Coffee; Xuhui: Time Travel – from the Thousand Years Old Longhua Culture to the Hundred Years Old Industrial Culture; Changning: A Journey to the Film and Television; Hongkou: “the Ark of Shanghai – an English Version Route; Yangpu: Play the Industrial Prelude, Listen to the Sounding Huangpu River.

(3) Emphasize the improvement of quality, and turn the Huangpu River Tour into world class tourism brand. Host Oct. 1 special activity – “Colorful Shanghai, Pleasant Huangpu River Tour”. Introducing a series of activities such as starting using the brand new Shiliupu Port, licensing the first batch of high-end tourism vessels, starting running the distribution platform on line, the first flight of new tourism vessels and night tour of the Huangpu River, enrich the tourism products of the Huangpu River Tour and amplify the promotion effect. At the same time, host photography competition – seek the most beautiful riverside smiling face as well as “Phoenix Cup” Shanghai Biking Touring Day to display the unique charm of the Huangpu River and the leisurely look of Shanghai.

(4) Enhance interaction and experience, and present the new look of “Shanghai Manufacturing”. Develop and integrate industrial tourist resources, and launch the first five tourism routes, namely, “Savor Shanghai Manufacturing – Classical Routes of Shanghai Industrial Tour”, including Shanghai Auto Museum, Shanghai Volkswagen, SAIC International Circuit, Shanghai Supercomputer Center, Science and Technology Museum of Integrated Circuit, the power production line of Shanghai Electric in Lingang, Shanghai, the production line of SANY, the Yangshupu water plant, Caohejing Hi-Tech Park and so on. Launch Shanghai Scientific Innovation Carnival for the first time, inviting citizens and tourists to experience the future smart city and smart travel.

(5) Strengthen the combination of commerce and tourism, and lead the new fashion of “Shopping in Shanghai”. With the tourism festival and shopping festival playing the leading role, host a series of activities such as pleasant shopping and touring along the Huangpu River, Shanghai star global port’ shopping festival of tourism culture, happy festival of North Sichuan Road, “LaoFengXiang Cup” Shanghai tourist souvenir design competition, “Phoenix Cup” Shanghai Biking Touring Day and so on, to enrich “Shopping in Shanghai”, promote native brands of Shanghai and improve the tourism shopping experience.

(6) Innovate in service and promote the development of inbound tourism. To cater to the new travel style that is more popular and more independent, the tourism festival of this year will introduce a batch of tourism service measures, including, launching the “Qualified Life in Shanghai” APP, using the latest technologies such as AI, multilingual translation and so on to fully present Shanghai’s tourism information about food, housing, transportation, travel, shopping and entertainment; applying a batch of multi-functional and smart tourism public service centers; hosting tourism festivals and activities focusing on foreign tourists, residents of international communities and students form international schools.