Building the way forward for tourism in Asia

The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) 60th Anniversary and Conference on the theme "Building Tourism: Past, Present, Progressive" kicked off Saturday in Beijing.

PATA is a non-profit membership association dedicated to supporting and promoting sustainable development in the travel and tourism industry of the Asia Pacific Region. More than 1,000 delegates from 66 countries and regions, representing over 400 organizations, attended the event.

More than 20 meetings and activities will be held until Wednesday, focusing on topics of distribution challenges, changing demographics, civil aviation, the rise of "Good Tourism," space adventure and technological innovations.The PATA will launch its forecasts of travel demand for regional China today, as one part of its Asia Pacific Tourism Forecasts 2011-2013.

"This is the first attempt to bring together the national and regional inbound forecasts, so that users have all the pertinent and needed information together in one compendium. These forecasts for regional China illustrate a direction being taken by PATA in recognizing that, while the world becomes globalized, it is simultaneously becoming regionalized in quite a distinct manner," said John Koldowski, PATA deputy CEO and head of office of strategic management.

According to the China National Tourism Administration, China's tourism industry has maintained a steady but fast development in the last five years. The annual average growth rate was 12 percent for domestic travel, 3.5 percent for inbound overnight tourist arrivals, and 19 percent for outbound tourists. The total tourism revenue rose by 15 percent per annum on average.

In 2010, China became the thirdandnbsp; largest inbound tourism destination and fourth largest country of the outbound tourism consumption, highlighting the more prominent role of tourism in driving the economic and social development of China.

Source = globaltimes.cn