Forget all the headlines about eye-watering pollution in Beijing and Shanghai – the Middle Kingdom’s latest tourism slogan invites visitors to “Beautiful China”.
Adorning buses and trains in cities such as London, the international marketing effort has been derided as particularly inept at a time when record-busting smog has drawn attention to the environmental and health costs of China’s unfettered industrialisation.
Like this year’s typically clunky theme for visitors “China Ocean Tourism Year”, the slogan highlights the tin ear of an industry that has ridden the coattails of China’s rapid economic growth and increased global prominence but failed to keep up with international travel trends.
... when you have all the stories about the pollution, and the air pollution in particular, people are not going to buy the fact that China is 100 per cent beautiful
“Beauty can be looked at in many different ways, but when you have all the stories about the pollution, and the air pollution in particular, people are not going to buy the fact that China is 100 per cent beautiful,” said Alastair Morrison, a Beijing-based expert in tourism destination marketing and development.
China’s tourism industry has grown at a fast pace since the country began free market-style economic reforms three decades ago. In 2011, travel and tourism generated US$644 billion, or more than nine per cent of China’s GDP, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council, mostly propelled by its huge domestic market of 1.1 billion people.
China is also the world’s third most visited country after France and the US Despite that status, the numbers are less significant economically than domestic tourism. On top of that, the growth in foreign tourists has lagged world averages.
According to the World Tourism Organisation, whose data is based on national sources, the average growth rate in overnight visitors worldwide was 2.8 per cent from 2008 to last year. The average growth rate in China was 2.1 per cent.