Summary of live streaming from World Travel Market: BRICS session
This is a collection of tweets from the event.
- Adam Wu, CBN: China projected to be top outbound market by 2015. Chinese are highest spending tourists. China ADS agreement is bilateral tourism agreement to promote tourism in both directions.
- The main challenge to grow outbound tourism is visa issue (recurring theme).
- Jeanine Pires, Brazil:
- 60% growth in domestic tourism, 15% growth in outbound tourism.
- 70% of spend is on shopping. Very intrepid travelers.
- Sergey Stanovkin, Russia: visa regulation for Russia is hard,
- cruise visa is very easy but limited to staying with the group on day tour. Russians find it hard to get visa to Britain.
- Winter Olympic Games are boost to tourism.
- Sanjay Kothari, India: growth is strong inbound. 714 mln domestic trips.
- Heavy investment in infrastructure. Need more international airports at high quality.
- Roshene Singh, South Africa: 4% growth inbound. New entry to BRICS (from. BRICs to BRICS is am easy leap). China is largest trading partner with SA. Office in China leads double digit growth 40 and 30 percent from India and China.
- Touching on responsible tourism: how not to develop tourism, lessons from the developed economies.
- China: mass traffic into short haul destination creates pressure. Outbound tourism is aimed at reducing trade surplus and spend in other countries. Top priority for Chinese is shopping.
- Brazil: how growth in inbound tourism affect the natural resources?
- Need to control numbers into sensitive areas, help reduce poverty, preserve resources while growing.
- How true is it that foreign tourist dollars trickle down to local communities and distribute wealth?
- Russia: benefit is integration into international community, creating jobs, help infrastructure development.
- India: focus on generating employment for local people. Providing training now to ensure trickle down to villages. Targeting 15 mln. (in China it is 32 mln now). India developing sustainable tourism criteria. Classification of hotels based on energy saving and suitable architecture.
- South Africa: developed tourism with responsibility and sustainability at its core. Use inclusion and discussion to develop criteria. Launched fair trade packages in UK market today.
- BRICS talk finishing with visa discussion. Not easy for visa access from other emerging economies. China ADS is mutual so should help in both directions.
- Question to China: why so difficult to open outbound tour operator business in China?
- Adam Wu: restrictions are easing but competition too hard and expensive setup costs.
- (Actually now only very large JV operators can get outbound license. Still not fully liberalized).
