At the recent China Tourism Industries Festival, 31 Chinese provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions jointly signed the Tianjin Declaration to confront the financial crisis and boost the development of tourism.

The parties will deepen regional cooperation, cultivate tourism brands, and build a tourism emergencies handling mechanism. The declaration also encourages large-scale tourism enterprises and well-known tourism management companies to conduct cross-regional operations and branding.

In addition, they will cooperate with tourism-related industries and departments to promote the development of industrial tourism, agricultural tourism, red tourism, and ecological tourism.

Jafar Jafari, the special envoy of the Secretary-General of the World Tourism Organization, said at CTIF that with the abundant tourism resources, China will be the largest country for inbound tourism by 2020.

(China Hospitality News September 24, 2009)