China.org.cn: Qingdao tourism meet draws impressive response

The World Tourism Cities Federation s annual Fragrant Hills Tourism Summit, which ended on Saturday in Qingdao, in Shandong province, drew a huge response this year.

Release time : 2018-09-12 10:08:33

source : China.org.cn

tourism development."

WTCF's annual summit will be hosted in Helsinki, Finland, next year, and at the WTCF's headquarter Beijing in 2020.

Established in 2012, WTCF is a nonprofit international tourism organization which aims to promote exchanges and cooperation among its 205 members, comprising cities and tourism-related institutions from around the world.

The federation unveiled its latest research at the summit, offering insights into the global tourism industry.

The Market Research Report on Chinese Outbound Tourist Consumption (2017-2018) aims to help overseas destinations and tourism institutions learn more about Chinese outbound tourists and their habits so as to attract more visitors from China.

The report covered 8,374 respondents, 48.6 percent of whom were from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

The report revealed that the favorite outbound destinations were Asia, Europe and North America, and that the reasons for travel were sightseeing, leisure, to experience different cultures, food and shopping.

Over 42 percent of the respondents chose group travel; 40 percent opted for independent travel and 18 percent went for customized travel.

Many shared their travel experiences on social media platforms such as WeChat and microblogs, and said they would recommend the destinations to others.

Nearly 90 percent of the respondents said they were willing to return to the destination within the next 12 months, mainly for the scenery, food and culture.

As for shopping, women were more focused on the experience. They paid attention to price and variety, whether the shops allowed the use of China's largest payment provider UnionPay and whether the retail staff spoke Chinese.

In the annual Report on the Development of World Tourism Cities (2018), London, New York, Frankfurt and Geneva each topped the rankings in different sectors.

As for the comprehensive ranking list, the top 10 cities were London, Paris, New York, Tokyo, Beijing