Development History of Domestic Tourism

Now let’s look at the development history of China’s domestic tourism.

Since the open-door policy in 1978, China’s domestic tourism industry has developed rapidly and experienced five stages of development.

The first stage is infancy stage.

Since the open-door policy in 1978, China’s economy is in urgent need of development. Therefore, priority was given to inbound tourism only, and domestic tourism market demand has not yet formed. China had not clearly defined the nature of tourism as part of it’s economy. The second stage is called rapid development stage.

With the improvement of economy, the domestic tourism market began to develop rapidly and the scale of demand increased day by day. National domestic tourism policy gradually changed from discouraged, not against in the past, to adjust measures to local conditions, correct guidance and steady development.

After entering 1990, domestic tourism went further into positive development.

Now let’s look at the whole country development stage.

The whole country development stage started in 1998. Tourism was established as a new growth point in the national economy. In the central economic work conference,

China’s tourism policy entered into a period of comprehensive and rapid development. Domestic tourism, inbound tourism and outbound tourism were then developing together. The development of China’s tourism industry entered into a period called integrated tourism.

Now let’t look at the stage four, we call it stable development stage.

In February 2009, the state council promulgated the opinions on accelerating the development of tourism, which aimed to develop tourism industry into a strategic pillar industry in the national economy. Since then the development of China’s tourism industry entered a period of comprehensive development focusing on domestic tourism.

Now let’s look at the 2016 until the present days, we called we enter into the integrated tourism development stage. What we mean by Integrated tourism development? In 2016, director of the National Tourism Administration, Li Jinzao proposed that China’s tourism development should change from scenic tourism to integrated tourism at the national tourism work conference. And then the National Tourism Administration released the first batch of 262 and the second batch of 238 units of national integrated tourism demonstration zone. The integrated tourism concept will be further explained at the later part of this session.