More than 200 leisure and tourism officials and experts from all over the world gathered in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, Saturday to attend China International Lake Tourism Forum.
   
Gerald Kenyon, executive officer of the World Leisure Organization, said: "Through our research activities, we've discovered the potential benefits of leisure and tourism for individual and collective well-being."
   
"We've also discovered that not all leisure and tourism activities serve these ends. I hope we can recognize and avoid some of the difficulties in less desirable outcomes." Kenyon noted.
   
Lake tourism in China features sightseeing as the major pattern, and it was haunted by unbalanced development in different regions, according to Liu Feng, a researcher with the Development Research Center of the State Council.
   
"To coordinate lake conservation with tourism development, relevant efforts in law stipulation and project programming should be reinforced," Liu said.
   
Larisa Batotsyrenova, manager of the Russia Baikal Filn Tourism Organization, said sustainable tourism development requires the involvement of stakeholders that cuts across sectors: governments, business, NGOs, and citizens.
   
The two-day event has drawn senior representatives of governments, international organizations in lake and tourism and experts in the field of leisure and tourism from universities around world, including Loch Ness, Baikal, Lake Victoria, and China's West Lake and Tai Lake.
   
Jointly initiated by China Tourism Association, the Zhejiang University and the Zhejiang Tourism Bureau, the forum highlighted "Lake Protection and Tourism Development" as the theme.

(Xinhua News Agency September 25, 2005)