Impact on Global Tourism

While the geopolitical implications of the Belt and Road Initiative has captured the world’s attention, there are few of any indepth discussion about the long term impact of the initiative on the global travel and tourism.

Actually tourism is very important for the Belt and Road Initiative and should be considered as the priority industry to facilitate the initiative.Why? First of all, tourism is an open system. It has closely linked with different service sectors, for example tourism consumptions are related to telecommunications consumptions, retails,education,wellness and other service sectors. So private tourism under the Belt and Road Initiative has the potential to guide the formation of the service industry system in the Belt and Road region.

And second of all,we can not just have the investment and trade without understanding of each other’s culture, and tourism can promote people to people exchange at various levels. It also has great potential to increase China’s soft power. And right now, if you look at the soft power ranking in the world, China is only ranked at 25th on the list. We have a great potential to increase China’s international image through culture exchange and international tourism. In addition,tourism itself is a booming industry. It is rapidly and stably growing over the last eight years. According to the statistics from the UNWTO,tourism has a growth rate around 4% each year and 393 million people travelled internationally for tourism over the last ten years.

This is an amazing number. Tourism will be the industry of vitality and prosperity.

And on the other hand, why is the Belt and Road Initiative important for tourism? What opportunities can this initiative bring to the tourism industry? First of all, it will provide better transportation system for tourism. If we have better connectivity, we are more likely to expand tourism. Trans-Eurasian transportation networks are being unified and streamlined. And we also have more direct flights from China to other Belt and Road countries over the last few years. And don’t forget about the Sea Road. We are going to have more ports and this will facilitate the development of cruise tourism in China. And China is predicted to be the world’s largest cruise market by 2030.

And also the travel between China and other Belt and Road countries will become easier due to the improved visa openness. China has already signed visa free agreement with 46 countries along the Belt and Road region.

There is policy advantage regarding to tourism. So the private sector as enterprisers are under order. It’s good news for the investment in the tourism sector in China and along the Belt and Road region. The Belt and Road region has abundant tourism resources, especially for natural reserves, world natural heritage sites and world culture heritage sites. Those are the most elite collection of tourism resources all over the world. And many destinations along the Belt and Road country has been ranked as the top destinations by the Lonely Planet.

And therefore the Belt and Road initiative will have the great potential to promote international tourism. We are going to have more Chinese tourists visiting the Belt and Road countries and also we invite people from these countries to visit China. According to the National Tourism Administration from 2016-2020, there will be 115 million Chinese tourists visiting foreign countries along the Belt and Road with a total expenditure of 200 billion US dollars. And China is also expected to attract 85 million foreign tourists to visit China with spending of US 110 billion in China. To sum up,China’s the Belt and Road Initiative is not only about trade,about goods, but also about people-people exchange, especially in the tourism industry.