Sun Gang, Deputy Director, National Tourism Administration

Pan-Pearl River Delta (PPRD) regional cooperation will boost the prosperity of the regional tourism sector, says Sun Gang, Deputy Director, National Tourism Administration.

The PPRD regional tourism cooperation is built on a good foundation. First, Hong Kong, Macao and Guangdong, which called "Greater Pearl River Delta" has well experienced tourism cooperation by established tourism mechanism early in 1988. Then, the structure of tourism cooperation between the other 8 provinces/regions in PPRD and the Greater Pearl River Delta has been shaped. With both sides attach importance to exploit the tourism market of each other, they will work together to promote regional tourism cooperation mechanism.

After the challenge of SARS last year, the mainland tourism was recovering rapidly. During the first 4 month of this year, the number of tourists and the tourism foreign revenue has experienced 9.57% and 9.65% increase respectively compared with the same period in 2002, and the visitors from mainland to Hong Kong and Macao respectively reached 4.061 million and 2.306 mln, up 50.88% and 67.22% on a year-on-year basis. Sun says.

The 9 provinces/regions, which is in possession of rich tourism resources, occupy large proportion of tourism revenue (international market) of the total in China. In 2002, the tourism revenue (international market) of this area hit 7.686 million US dollars, accounting for 37.7% of the total in China, says Sun.

We hope that the coming established meeting systems, such as governor meeting system, the secretary-general coordination system, and the department coordination system could promote the tourism cooperation in PPRD region and solve problems emerging in the cooperation. Sun says.

The members should strengthen the international competitiveness and upgrade the status of PPRD tourism industry, says Sun

Sun also says that Tourism of PPRD should also enhance tourism cooperation with tourism sector of Yangtze River Delta region and the Bohai Ring to seek further tourism resources integration.

Editor: Catherine