BEIJING, 23 November 2018: Beijing welcomed 2.27 million tourists, January to July this year, up 2.5% year on year.
It underscores Beijing’s efforts to explore new inbound tourism partnerships and open up its tourism market through a string of support progammes.
They include projects to introduce special funds for awarding inbound tourism, funds for events, shopping tax rebates on departure for overseas tourists, and a six-day (144 hour) transit visa exemption.
Inbound tourism is expected to play a bigger role for the Chinese capital with major events lined up for 2019 through 2020.
The city will host the International Horticulture Exhibition in 2019, and the World Leisure Conference in 2020.
The Winter Olympics and Winter Paralympic Games will also be held in Beijing in 2022.
In February, the Beijing Municipal Commission of Tourism Development (BMCTD) launched the “Global Distribution Partnership Programme for Beijing Tourism”. It marks China’s first strategic cooperation mechanism that recruits participation from international travel agents. The project has received over 120 applications from international travel agents, while 30 of them, selected to be the partners, have signed a three-year deal with the BMCTD to strengthen cooperation, information sharing, marketing, and tourism route development.
By promoting the project, the BMCTD hopes to explore ways to expand inbound tourism an enhance Beijing’s appeal as a global tourism destination.
Based on changes in inbound travel trends, Beijing will introduce tours to overseas markets under specific themes such as ancient capital tours, modern capital tours, folklore tours, fashion tours, food tours and research and study tours, Chinese traditional medicine health tours as well as conference and sports tours.
(Source: Beijing Municipal Commission of Tourism Development)
