This year marks the tenth anniversary of China's "Belt and Road" initiative. Now, international exchanges and cooperation in the field of "Belt and Road" culture and tourism are gradually transforming from "freehand brushwork" of planning and layout to "meticulous meticulous painting". With the current orderly recovery of outbound tourism, thanks to the joint construction of the "Belt and Road" and its own long history and splendid culture, the joint construction of the country has become a worthy dark horse of outbound tourism.
At the COTTM of the 16th China Outbound Tourism Fair held in Beijing not long ago, many insiders expressed that they were optimistic about the new opportunities for cultural and tourism development of the "Belt and Road". More than 20 countries and regions from Egypt, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia and other countries and regions have organized government agencies to participate in the exhibition, and brought tourism resources, hotels, scenic spots, aviation and inbound tourism service agencies to the scene, warmly inviting Chinese tourists to their living land to experience different natural and cultural landscapes.
In January and March this year, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism successively released two lists of countries that have resumed outbound group tourism, most of which are countries jointly building the "Belt and Road". According to the big data report on outbound tourism in the first half of 2023 released by the China Tourism Research Institute in July this year, 70% of the top 20 destinations with the longest stay time in a single destination are co constructed countries, and mainland (mainland) tourists are in Thailand, Spain, Kazakhstan, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Fiji, Malaysia, Maldives The average stay time in Cuba and other countries is more than 3 days.
Matt Thompson, project director of Tassus Group, said that the "Belt and Road" initiative has provided a huge engine and unlimited opportunities for the development and restructuring of China's outbound tourism. "At present, China has signed cultural and tourism cooperation with 144 countries jointly building the Belt and Road. There is no doubt that countries jointly building the Belt and Road will play an increasingly important role in China's outbound tourism destinations."
Xu Ning, general manager of the Beijing Aomei Non business Department of Unitrust Tourism Group Youneide Tourism, said that since the Ministry of Culture and Tourism released the list of countries to restore outbound tourism teams this year, the company has actively integrated resources, contacted airlines and other companies to prepare for business restart. Up to now, the company's "Belt and Road" outbound tourism product business has maintained a rapid growth trend.
"I always believe that the next three to five years, or even longer, is the best time for the development of outbound tourism business in the whole Middle East and Africa sector." Chen Shuai, CEO of Aifei Holiday, believes that tourism practitioners should take advantage of the current window dividend to seize the development opportunity.
Chen Hansheng, CEO of Featured Culture and Tourism Holding Group, said that since the tourism recovery in 2023, the sales of its "Belt and Road" products have increased by 150% over 2019. In his opinion, most of the countries jointly built are countries along the ancient Silk Road and the Maritime Silk Road. One common feature of these countries is that they have rich tourism resources, but the difference is that the level of tourism hardware facilities in various countries is different, and some countries do not have luxury hotels and other high-quality supporting facilities. "We can't just rely on hardware to improve the so-called quality, because only considering the high quality of hardware, it is easy to have homogenization competition. The result of homogenization competition is a price war, and eventually there will be a very strange phenomenon: on the one hand, high-quality hardware, on the other hand, services are declining. We should have both high quality hardware and high quality software, so we should focus on the high quality of services, explain the history and culture of these countries in place, and provide good tour guide services, which will be a major starting point for the high-quality development of the 'Belt and Road' outbound tourism. "
"This year (outbound tourism business segment), the United Arab Emirates and Egypt have a very large increase, and these destinations have increased by more than three digits year-on-year in 2019." Hu Wenyu, the regional director of Australia, the United States and Africa of Ctrip Travel and Vacation Business Department, mentioned that the biggest constraint to the development of the "Belt and Road" tourism is the lack of service personnel. This is not only a bottleneck, but also an opportunity. Especially in the Caucasus, including Iran and other regions, the interpretation level and language ability of local tour guides need to be improved. "At present, we mainly make up for it through the tour leader, recommend similar textbooks, and let them study in their leisure time outside the tour leader."
Huang Yan, assistant general manager of CYTS Travel International Travel Service Business Department, said, "In the business segment of the" Belt and Road ", we focus more on product segmentation, such as skiing. Tourists usually think of skiing as a place like Switzerland, but in fact, Georgia's snow can rank among the top three and top four in the world, so the joint construction of tourism resources in the" Belt and Road "countries requires all of us to work together to promote these unique resources to more tourists." 。
