Beijing assembly witnesses world tourism development

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, October 25, 2003

Beijing assembly witnesses world tourism development

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The World Tourism Organization (WTO) will become a specialized organization of the United Nations (UN), which signifies the common recognition of tourism by international society, said WTO Secretary-General Francesco Frangialli Friday.

He said the international community treated tourism as equal to other important activities, such as agriculture, education, culture and public health.

During the eight-day session of the WTO General Assembly which closed here Friday, over 1,000 representatives from some 130 member nations witnessed the enhanced position of world tourism. They passed a decision related to the WTO's entry into the UN. The final decision needs to be approved in November in New York.

Participants of the meeting agreed that tourism, as part of the service industry, provided job opportunities and was integrated with finance, aviation and hotel industry, thus becoming an industry within other industries.

The increase of tourism also indicated its openness to the outside world and promoted regional cooperation. Statistics indicated that tourism had become one of the biggest trans-national businesses.

ASEAN nations all held to the idea of strengthening regional cooperation. The ASEAN tourism agreement signed last year has already promoted regional development. Cooperation among ASEAN, China, Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK) also achieved remarkable progress, said Cambodian Minister of Tourism Veng Sereyvuth.

Laos strengthened cooperation with neighboring nations, especially those along the Mekong River, said Vang Rappanavong, acting chairman of the Lao Tourism Board.

Some 20 years ago, many developing nations considered tourism a luxury activity. Today, most of these nations consider tourism one of the pillar industries in the national economy, said Geoffrey Lipman, special advisor to WTO.

Statistics showed there were only 1.81 million inbound travelers in 1978 in China, with tourism revenue reaching 263 million US dollars. The inbound travelers rose to 97.9 million in 2002, and tourism revenue grew to 20.4 billion US dollars.

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