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Tourism has become a new engine powering the Beijing economy. In the first half of this year, the total number of tourists came to Beijing stood at 131 million, a year-on-year increase of 5.8 percent. Gross income from tourism reached about 228.8 billion yuan, increasing by 11 percent. Tourist catering and shopping amounted to 57 billion yuan, or 22 percent of all retail sales of consumer goods.
This progress mainly resulted from the city’s tourism committee’s new policy. The committee decided to make suburban tourism more available to visitors and to build a new supply system. In the system, traditional villages are required to make proposals for development and to provide relevant services and facilities for the visitors, such as folding maps, a mobile counseling center, bio-toilets and free Wi-Fi stations. Also, ten kinds of tourism facilities are asked to improve, including international hotels, recreational farms, fruit-picking orchards, and automobile camps. A hundred feature villages and a three-thousand-meter recreational walking path are going to be built. About ten thousand suburban households will be trained in tourism requirements. To support the program financially, the government will provide two billion yuan as a guarantee fund.
The program has already made great progress. The infra-structure improving project is finished at a budget of 23.7 million yuan. Walking paths148-kilometers long in 8 key areas are under construction. By the end of May, the Beijing Tourism Financing Guarantee Service System had loaned about 401 million yuan to 399 suburban tourism projects, costing about 705 million yuan.
In the first half of the year, the actual amount of investment in the Beijing tourism industry was 196 million yuan. Accumulated tourism facility investment is 33 billion yuan, rising by 30 percent year-on-year and occupying 11 percent of China’s fixed assets investment, 1.8 percent higher than last year.
Under these circumstances, global theme parks are gaining popularity, Beijing folk-culture suburbs are more often chosen by city dwellers for weekends, the trans-provincial departure tax refund is collected in higher amounts in Beijing and Tianjin, and “Beijing souvenir” specialty stores are widely distributed.
