Sino-Canadian coastal cities strengthen tourism ties

Sino-Canadian ties were strengthened further Monday when Qingdao Tourism Administration and Tourism Richmond signed a bilateral agreement to further bridge and elevate the opportunities of their friendship cities status.

The signing ceremony in the British Columbia city, a neighboring municipality to Vancouver, comes three years after Qingdao and Richmond entered into a friendship city agreement. The first step of the co-operation is to connect with Canadian-based tour agencies and tour companies that sell and promote outbound travel to China, getting them to promote Qingdao as a tourism city.

Similar activities will be done with Chinese tour operators to promote Richmond, home of the Vancouver international Airport and the arrival point for most in-bound tourists to Canada.

Wang Jian Gong, Qingdao Tourism Administration director, said the two cities were a good fit as both were in coastal areas and both acted as host venues for Olympic events Qingdao for the sailing at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and Richmond for the speed skating at the 2010 Winter Olympics Games.

"Qingdao is such a beautiful city with a lot of tourism resources and also, it's developing fast as an economic area. However, the reputation abroad is limited to Qingdao beer, but not for the tourism products. We'd like to popularize the Qingdao tourism reputation," he said.

"The Olympics popularized Qingdao and that's why the Qingdao municipal government has put a high emphasis on the tourism industry development, asking and urging the tourism industry to develop faster and faster."

Wang added the plan was to promote "Qingdao as a tourism city, China's best destination for tourists," by initially choosing top media travel agencies to promote a network of awareness about the 7.5 million population Shandong city.

"From this we are going to deepen the understanding and cooperation in other areas such as culture, economic and business." Gayle Morris, Tourism Richmond's director of sales who recently returned from a four-city China tour that took in Beijing, Shanghai, Xiamen and Qingdao, said the city was working with the Canadian Tourism Commission, the B.C. tourism ministry, and tour operator to get more Chinese visitors to the 180,000-population city.

Canada designation as an Approved Destination Status (ADS) from China that went into effect last summer, would help aid the promotion, she said.

"We have made many, many inroads in China already, building the tour relations because that is where the business comes from. It's directed to tour companies that have recently received ADS. That is group ADS, but we also have a very good relation with our tour companies who sell to business and individual travelers," Morris said.

"We've made a lot of inroads and we're educating the travel community about why Richmond. Yes, it's home to the Vancouver International Airport, but more importantly 60 percent of our community is of Asian ancestry. We speak the language. Restaurants, we know that the Chinese community when they travel to Richmond they want to eat, not just one meal but maybe all three meals. They can do that here in Richmond."

Qingdao is looking to promote a host of event it holds throughout the year to both international tourists and the business traveler sector.

Among them are the Qingdao International Beer Festival held each August-September, fashion week, the beach festival, the ocean festival, the hot air balloon festival and the bar-culture fair. For the business sector there is the APEC SME Technology Conference and Fair, the China International Exposition of Home Appliances, the China International Afforestation Fair, the International Fishery Fair and the International Maritime Exhibition.

Richmond, a city by the sea, regularly promotes its fishing heritage with such events as the Steveston Salmon Festival each July 1 in B.C.'s largest commercial fishing port, the Maritime Festival running May through September, and the abundance of shopping malls and restaurants in and around No. 3 Road.

"We see Steveston Village as the gem where they can experience a west coast flavor neighborhood with great fresh seafood and wonderful Canadian shops and services," Morris said. "Ice wine from Lulu Island Winery offers that lovely sweet wine and that's one of those stopovers when they visit Richmond."

Source: Xinhua

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