ASEAN Key to Travel Industry Growth within Southern China
China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations member countries have maintained growing momentum in tourism cooperation and Guangxi, which neighbors Southeast Asia, has played an important role in the cooperation, said officials.
Yang Xiuping, secretary-general of the China-ASEAN Center, an intergovernmental organization for trade, investment, tourism, education and culture cooperation between the two sides, said tourism cooperation has been an important part of the China-ASEAN partnership.
"In the context of the global economic slowdown, tourism development between China and ASEAN has been flourishing, offering new opportunities for growth in our partnership," Yang said.
According to China's statistics, about 23.65 million tourists from China and ASEAN countries visited each other last year. Chinese tourists to ASEAN destinations surpassed 17 million, growing nearly 50 percent from 2014.
Along with an increasing number of visits, China and ASEAN members have deepened cooperation in education, training, transportation and market regulation, according to the National Tourism Administration.
Guangxi has been the most active player in such cooperation programs.
The National Tourism Administration has designated the Guangxi University for Nationalities and Guilin Tourism College as the major bases for training tourism professionals for Southeast Asian countries.
The two Guangxi-based schools jointly established a China-ASEAN tourism personnel training base, which has brained 449 people since 2008.
The Guangxi Tourism Development Commission has also offered a number of programs for training ASEAN professionals. There are two sessions of the program each year, training about 100 people.
According to the National Tourism Administration, Guangxi's various institutions have trained a total of 1,033 tourism management professionals for ASEAN member countries since 2009.
Under the guidance of the National Tourism Administration, Guangxi has established a meeting mechanism with Southeast Asian countries, focusing on coordinating market regulation.
In the field of tourism transportation, Nanning and Guilin have opened air services to connect major Southeast Asian cities: Nanning has international train service to Hanoi, as well as buses to Vietnam's Hanoi, Hai Phong and Ha Long. There are ocean passenger liners from Guangxi's Fangchenggang and Beihai to Ha Long.
Guangxi has also launched partnerships with Vietnam and Malaysia to present joint tour routes, including China-Vietnam border tours and cruise ship tours between Guangxi and cities in Vietnam and Malaysia.
The China-ASEAN Expo tourism exhibition, annually held in Guilin since last year, has been an important platform for bilateral tourism cooperation for both industrial regulators and tourism businesses.
This year's exhibition, to be held from Oct 20 to 22, aims to establish a China-ASEAN tourism commonwealth to better share tourism resources, according to the event's organizers.
Last year, Guangxi received 1.19 million tourists from ASEAN member countries, growing 6.51 percent year-on-year. Guangxi's tourists to ASEAN countries amounted to 1.12 million in the same year, according to the Guangxi Tourism Development Commission.
Gan Lin, head of the commission, said Guangxi has become both an important source and destination market for ASEAN members, adding that both sides will launch more products and services to meet the growing tourist demand.
