Tourism Industry
I. Present Situation of the Development of Tourism
Yunnan tourism industry, one of the "five major pillar enterprises" of the province, has been developing continuously in a healthy way in the past five years since 1998. The effects of tourism as a pillar enterprise are beginning to emerge, and its position and function in the national economy of the province have been greatly strengthened with each passing day. In 1998 Yunnan received 28.7 million/person domestic and foreign visitors, while in 2002 the number of visitors to Yunnan at home and abroad amounted to 52.4 million/person, representing an average increase of 16.25%, of which the number of overseas visitors increased from 0.61 million/person to 1.304 million/person and the foreign currency from tourism increased from USD 261 million to USD 419 million, accounting for an annual increase of 14.4% and 12.6% respectively. The total income of the province from tourism industry increased from RMB 13.69 billion yuan to RMB 28.99 billion yuan, constituting an annual growth of 20.6%. The proportion between total tourism income and GDP of the province increased from 7.6% to 12.8%, and the proportion between the tourism foreign currency and the total foreign currency made from export increased from 22.2% to 30%. The number of people directly or indirectly engaged in tourism has reached 1.605 million. Tourism has made considerable contribution to the adjustment of industrial structure, the opening up to the outside world, the development of service industry, the efforts to eliminate poverty and help people get rich, and to the ease of unemployment pressure in the province. Tourism has now become a new point for economic growth in Yunnan.
II. Development Prospect
1. Rich resources as the solid foundation. The tourism resources of Yunnan, formed on the background of complex geographical environment, abundant bio-resources and diversity of ethnic cultures, are characterized by diversity, peculiarity and excellent combination of multiple scenic resorts. Not only are the natural scenic spots rich and varied, the places of human interest represented by the ethnic cultures are also spectacular and colorful, all of which provide a profound inside information of ethnic cultures for the development of tourism industry, forming an excellent combination of natural scenic spots and places of human culture, in which one complements the other in perfect harmony. A large number of scenic resorts (spots) in Yunnan are world renowned for their high quality. They are suitable for various types of tourist activities and possess necessary conditions for becoming world-class tourism products. Yunnan has the geographical advantage of being in vicinity with the neighboring countries in Southeast Asia and South Asia. The construction of the great international passageway, coupled with the construction of highways, railways, air and water transportation networks in Yunnan province, will contribute greatly to the development of regional cooperation among the neighboring countries, provinces and autonomous regions, and help tourism of Yunnan merge into the tourism ring of Southeast and South Asia.
2. Good Foundation for Tourism Development. As a result of investment and nurture of tourism industry in the past years, a breakthrough has been made in the construction of infrastructure for tourism, and a number of highly well-known exquisite scenic resorts have been established. Currently there are 14 national or provincial "civilization demonstration scenic resorts", 10 national scenic spots or places of historical interest, 1 national tourist holiday resort, ranking the third in the country; there are 48 provincial scenic spots or places of historical interest, 6 provincial tourist holiday resorts with a total area of 13,000 square kilometers, making up 3.3% of the total area of the province, ranking among the leading positions in the country; there are five historically and culturally famous ancient cities of China, namely: Kunming, Dali, Lijiang, Jianshui, and Weishan; there are 3 culturally and historically famous cities on the provincial level, namely: Baoshan, Tengchong and Weixin. There are altogether 1344 key places listed as units for preservation of cultural or historical relics, which have been formally assessed and approved by the people's governments of various levels. Among them 17 are listed on the national level and 102 on the provincial level. With the continuous improvement and perfection of the comprehensive transportation system and tourism service, Yunnan has achieved comparatively advantage over the other provinces in China's western region in the aspects of integral industrial system and infrastructure facilities, thus laying a solid foundation for the development of tourism in Yunnan during the Tenth Five Year Plan period.
3. Facing the Tremendous Market Demands. In accordance with the prediction of the World Tourism Organization, by the year 2020, it is possible that China will have become the largest recipient country of visitors and the largest tourist target country in the world, with the number of expected international visitors reaching 137 million/person, comprising 8% of the total world market. Meanwhile, with the increase of the disposable income and leisure time of the people, the demands for domestic tourism are increasing continuously, thus providing greater space for the development of tourism of the province.
4. Joining WTO and the implementation of China's strategy for the grand development of the western region have provided excellent opportunity for the development of tourism in Yunnan. In the strategy for grand development of Western Region, the State formulates various preferential policies for the development of tourism, such as tourism national debt, opening up to the outside world, finance and taxation, investment and loans, construction of infrastructure facilities and biological environment, etc. All these have created very favorable macroscopic policy environment for the development of Yunnan's tourism industry.
5. Opportunity offered by the establishment of China-ASEAN Free Trade Zone. The start of the establishment of China-ASEAN Free Trade Zone will literally make Yunnan move forward from the end position to the very front of opening up to the outside world, and bring Yunnan new opportunity for the development of tourism in the regional cooperation.
6. Opportunity brought by the participation in tourism cooperation of Lancangjiang River and Meigonghe River sub-area. The idea has been formally put forward about setting up a unified Lancangjiang River and Meigonghe River Tourism Ring with joint efforts of all parties, and about building the Eight Countries Park in Southeast Asia. According to this concept, Yunnan will play the pivotal role in the cooperative development of visitor markets among the countries concerned. Yunnan will attract more and more tourists at home and abroad by way of increasing the number of tourists to the neighboring countries and transferring tourists from the sub-area to other tourism destinations in China. In addition, Yunnan will organize tourists to visit the countries of the sub-area or cross-border tours to these countries in accordance with China's regulations.
In the meantime, the pressure of competition is also rapidly increasing. There exist the similarity of tourism resources and the similar structure of tourism products in most of the provinces in the country's western region. With the increased realization of the importance of tourism and the implementation of the strategy of great development of China's western region, the provinces and autonomous regions in the area are generally attaching greater importance to the development of tourism and have designated it as a pillar or key enterprise and given it supports, thus constituting a potential pressure and challenge to tourism in Yunnan province.
The age of multifarious demands on tourism market has come now. The regional competition for markets is becoming more intense and the trend towards grouping is getting more and more conspicuous. These changes in the tourism market pattern have set higher demands upon tourism of the province.
III, Overall Development Layout
In accordance with the "General Plan of Tourism Development in Yunnan Province" and "Plan for Development of Tourism Industry during the Tenth Five Year Plan period in Yunnan", the tourism industry of Yunnan will be developed in line with the overall layout of "one tourism center, five major tourist areas, six selected tourist routes, eight tourism products with distinctive features, and three tourism rings".
One Tourism Center:
The central Yunnan tourism zone with Kunming as its core is to be built into the key tourism center and the visitors' distributing center of the province. Taking full advantage of the favorable geographical position at the center of Yunnan and the abundant tourism resources in the area, more tourism products are to be further developed, including sightseeing, leisure holidays, commercial meetings and exhibitions, sports and fitness exercises, etc., so as to build this tourism center into a famous sighting and holiday tourist resort in southwest China and Southeast Asia, a base for golf sport and meetings and exhibitions. The Stone Forest and Fuxianhu Lake should be developed into world famed tourism resorts with renowned brands.
Five major Tourism Areas:
On the basis of further consolidating, developing and promoting the tourism areas of northwest Yunnan, southwest Yunnan, southeast Yunnan, and west Yunnan, efforts must also be made to develop the northeast Yunnan tourism area at the same time.
Great emphasis must be laid on the development of biological tourism products combined with the tradition and customs of the minority nationalities in the northwest tourism area, so as to build the area into a highly attractive "Xianggelila' tourism area with great world fame. Dali, Lijiang and Diqing should be developed into world renowned tourism area and secondary tourism collecting and distributing center linking Tibet and Sichuan.
The southwest tourism area should be built into a tourism area of international standard with distinctive characteristics of its own, which mainly contains tropical rainforests, ethnic tradition and customs and border tourism. The city of Jinghong should be built into an international tourism distributing center in Yunnan facing the Southeast Asia. And priority should be given to the construction of Lancangjiang River-Meigonghe River multi-national tourist route and the development of tours to the villages with distinctive features in Xishuangbanna.
The main tasks for the southeast tourism area are to develop the exquisite tourism circular route of karst formation, to cultivate the selected scenic spots and areas renowned at home and abroad, such as Jiulong-Duoyihe River in Luoping, the multi-colored sand forests in Luliang, Puzhehe in Qiubei, Alugudong Cave in Luxi and Yuanzhidong Cave in Jianshui. The cities of Hekou, Luoping and Jianshui should be built into secondary tourism distributing centers facing Vietnam and linking Guangxi and Guizhou provinces.
The west Yunnan tourism area should take full advantage of volcano and terrestrial heat, sub-tropical scenery, ethnic tradition and customs, and border areas, give priority to the development of the exquisite tourism route across the borders of Southeast Asian countries, so as to turn Tengchong volcano and terrestrial heat tour and Luili border tour into selected tourism products with renowned reputation at home and abroad.
The newly-developed northeast tourism area, with Zhaotong as its collecting and distributing center, should make use of the unique tourism resources within the area and take advantage of its geographical position of bordering Sichuan and Guizhou provinces, and strive to build the area into a tourism zone with distinctive features of its own, which will complement with other tourism areas.
Six Exquisite Tourism Routes:
Based on the characteristics and advantages of the tourism products of "one center and five major areas", six exquisite tourism routes should be developed, namely: the center of Yunnan exquisite route for sight-seeing, holidays, meetings and exhibitions; the northwest Yunnan "Xiangelila" bio-culture exquisite tourism route; the southwest tropical rainforest and inter-nation exquisite tourism route; the west Yunnan border tourism, and volcano and terrestrial heat exquisite tourism route; the southeast Yunnan karst formation scenery and border exquisite tourism route; and the northeast Yunnan culture and history, inter-provincial exquisite tourism route. Meanwhile, it is planned to further develop various special tourism routes on the basis of the above-mentioned six main exquisite routes.
Eight Tourism Products with Distinctive Features:
In the light of the demands of tourism consumption at home and abroad and the trend of tourism development, efforts should be made mainly to develop three level tours ( sightseeing, meetings and exhibitions, and holiday-making ), and eight major tourism products, namely: biological tour, folk custom tour, border tour, commercial meeting and exhibition tour, leisure and holiday tour, sports and fitness tour, scientific investigation tour and exploration tour.
Three Tourism Rings:
It is planned to establish three major tourism rings by combining the domestic and international tourism markets through great efforts during the Tenth Five Year Plan period and the following fifteen years.
The first is the provincial tourism ring. A fast and convenient tourist circular route rich in content should be established to link up all the major scenic spots and resorts and all the major tourism cities.
The second is the domestic ring. It is planned to build China's southwest tourism ring which combines Yunnan closely with the provinces and autonomous regions of Tibet, Sichuan, Chongqing, Guangxi, Guizhou, and the domestic tourism ring linking Yunnan to the developed provinces and cities in the coastal areas. Special efforts should be made to develop the following tourism routes: Yunnan-Sichuan-Tibet air and land tourism route; Yunnan-Guizhou-Guangxi tourism route by Nanling-Kunming Railway; Guiyang-Kunming tourism route by Gui-Kun Railway and highways; Yunnan-Shanghai-Suzhou air tourism route; and Yunnan-Hongkong-Macao tourism route by air and train, etc.
The third one is the international ring. Full advantage should be taken of the favorable conditions in the tourism cooperation of Lancangjiang River-Mergonghe River sub-area, so as to establish an international tourism ring closely connecting Yunnan with the Southeast countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar and Laos. Efforts should be made to develop the international tourism ring connecting with Japan, South Korea, Europe and America, Africa and Oceania. Exploratory work should be carried out to establish South Asia international tourism ring linking Yunnan to India and Bangladesh.