On September 10, local time, CNTA Chairman Li Jinzao and Kelly Craighead, Executive Director of the National Travel and Tourism Office under the U.S. Department of Commerce, signed the 2016-2017 China-U.S. Tourism Cooperation Agreement and reached consensus on how to further open up the market and strengthen bilateral travel exchange. Then Chairman Li received the meeting cup from Brand USA President & CEO Christopher L. Thompson and the next edition of the meeting would be hosted in Ningxia, China. 

 

To expand bilateral travel & tourism service trade and tap the travel potential to the maximum extent created by the latest visa validity agreement, CNTA and the U.S. Department of Commerce agreed  to launch a special travel & tourism program, share with each other their experience in the travel market, project marketing, design and implementation, and organize trainings for Chinese and American travel & tourism industries. They also agreed to further open up the market and strived to ensure the sustainability of organized Chinese tours to the USA; cooperate in statistics and promoting success experience, share entry/exit data and the methods to collect it, jointly develop introductory manuals to show the personnel exchange between provinces, regions and states in the two countries, and share information about marketing opportunities and challenges. 

 

At the summit, both Chinese and American tourism departments agreed that bilateral tourism cooperation faced unprecedented opportunities and could play a bigger role in constructing a new type of relationship between China and the USA, two big powers in the world. Both sides would increase mutual visits, organize large-scale mutual visits and exchange activities for Chinese and American tourists, travel agencies and media in batches, and expand the scale of people-to-people exchange; deepen local cooperation, encourage tourism cooperation between second- and third-tiered cities in the two countries and support them to launch all sorts of tourism promotion activities in each other’s market; expand the cooperation channel, support both Chinese and American tourism associations, local promotion alliances, and stationed agencies to strengthen communication, cooperate and support each other in marketing; reinforce tourism investment and cooperation, analyze tourism investment projects and policy information in a timely manner and host activities including the China-U.S. Tourism Investment Seminar when conditions are mature; cooperate in tourism education, and actively organize tourism exchange activities for Chinese and American teenagers to enhance their mutual understanding and friendship. 

 

The meeting was to the great satisfaction of business insiders who felt that their voices and needs were fully taken into consideration by Chinese and American tourism departments, and believed that the agreement reached was pragmatic and would definitely open new prospects for China-U.S. tourism cooperation and play a positive role in deepening mutual understanding of Chinese and American peoples.