The 2021 World Tourism Cities Federation (WTCF) Europe-Africa Regional Conference—City and Chinese Enterprise Dialogue Online Conference was held on June 8. Zhangjiajie was the only Chinese city that participated in the meeting. It shared its tourism development experience, including COVID-19 prevention and control, and tourism recovery with 223 WTCF members from 75 countries and regions.

WTCF is the world's first international tourism organization that focuses on cities. It was formed at the initiative of Beijing. Its members include 75 countries and regions. In August 2012, Zhangjiajie gained the membership. It has been maintaining close cooperation with WTCF.

Zhangjiajie municipal government and the people made concerted efforts in the fight against COVID-19 last year. There were no major tourist complaints, no imported travel-related cases, no travel-related negative public opinion, and no local cases. Zhangjiajie registered the fewest COVID-19 cases of Hunan province. It was the first city in Hunan to have all of its COVID-19 patients discharged from medical care.

Zhangjiajie launched a “310” action plan and “Tourism Plus” activities to boost the tourism industry. It adopted marketing methods such as “Tourism + Automobile”, “Tourism + Sports”, “Tourism + Public Welfare”, “Tourism + Photography”, and “Tourism + Poetry”, to promote its tourist products to the world.

In the first quarter of 2021, Zhangjiajie had more than 11 million tourist visits. It has a year-on-year increase of more than 140%, and reaching nearly 85% of the total in the same period of 2019. Tourism revenue exceeded 13 billion yuan, increasing by nearly 160% over the last year measured and equaling more than 70% of the total in the same period in 2019.

This article is from Hunan Provincial Government www.enghunan.gov.cn.

Translator: Xiao Juan

Chinese source: hunan.voc.com.cn