Chengdu tourism strategy pays off

Qingcheng Mountains, birthplace of Taoism.

Renowned Sichuan hotpot is widely available in Chengdu, the provincial capital.

With registered capital totaling 220 million yuan and a 5-billion-yuan loan from Bank of China, the governments of six counties bordering the Longmen Mountain, together with Chengdu Culture and Tourism Group, have founded a company to develop and manage the tourism site.

The company has invested 123 million yuan in the ancient township of Pingle, a tourism attraction some 90 kilometers southwest of Chengdu. It also plans to launch another project in Jiezi town, which is estimated to be worth 1 billion yuan.

Similar companies have been founded in a number of counties and districts.

The city established information centers in South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong. It does promotion and marketing in seven major overseas tourist sources, including Japan and Singapore.

High-tech approaches are also employed to enhance tourists' experience.

Thanks to cooperation between local tourism authorities and the three major Chinese telecommunication operators, tourists from outside Chengdu receive a welcome message upon arrival in the city.

Smart tourism information retrieval systems are installed in any hotel with a three-star ranking or higher. The system is supported by a database of around 400,000 entries about the city's tourism sites and related services.

In the near future, the government will focus on developing a number of competitive products for tourists, and will strive to make its tourism marketing more customer oriented.

In addition, the city plans to build a tourism call center to deal with inquiries, complaints and emergency response.

However, Chengdu is not only a city of tourism but also a burgeoning economy.

It is expected to become one of the country's economic powerhouses over the next decade, local officials say.

Considerable investment has already been drawn to the city, which now hosts more than 200 Fortune 500 companies, including IBM, Dell and Intel.

It also ranks first in the southwestern region in terms of the number of foreign banks and consulates .

Chengdu will host this year's Fortune Global Forum, making it the first southwestern venue to hold the grand event, which was previously hosted by Shanghai and Hong Kong.

zhangzhao@chinadaily.com.cn