China proposes to advance Mekong tourist-city alliance

The Chinese delegates have proposed that jointly advancing the construction of the Lancang-Mekong Tourist Cities Cooperation Alliance is of great significance for sustained tourism development and biodiversity conservation in the Mekong sub-region.

The idea was put forward at the UNWTO/Chimelong Initiatives Sub-regional Capacity Building Workshop on Sustainable Tourism & Biodiversity Conservation for the Mekong Sub-region Member States, which was held in Laos from February 19 to 21.

The workshop was jointly organized by the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the Lao Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism, and Chimelong Group, the leading enterprise in China’s tourism industry. Representing China, the Kunming Branch of China Tourism Academy and Yunnan Tourism Planning Institute sent a delegation to the UNWTO event.

Noting the Lancang-Mekong River makes a complete ecosystem, the Chinese delegates said conservation efforts to biodiversity and environment should be carried out in the entire Lancang-Mekong river basin that stretches nearly the 5,000 kilometers.

In accordance with the Sanya Declaration and Phnom Penh Declaration of the first and second Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) Leaders' Meetings, China and the other five Mekong countries have been building the Lancang-Mekong Tourist Cities Cooperation Alliance, said the Chinese delegation.

In the past three years (2016-2018), the multilateral Cross-Border Tourism Cooperation Forum was held in the Chinese province of Yunnan, and an agreement was reached that the preparatory office of the alliance is to be established in Kunming, Yunnan Province.

Seeking guidance from the UNWTO, the Chinese delegates said preparatory conference for the alliance is scheduled to be hold in Kunming during the 2019 China International Travel Mart (CITM), and tourism ministries in the Mekong countries are expected to recommend more eligible cities to participate in the alliance.

More than 30 delegates from China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam participated in the three-day workshop, through which the UNWTO hopes to inspire more tourism professionals and residents in the Mekong region to be conservationists for bio-diversity and environment, with their income sustained by active tourism development.

Reporting by Chu Donghua; trans-editing by Wang Shixue