BEIJING, Oct. 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The 15th UNWTO/PATA Forum on Tourism Trends and Outlook opened in Guilin city, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region last Friday.

Themed on "Tourism and Rural Development", the forum has attracted many government officials, experts, scholars and industry elites from home and abroad, sharing their experience and cases of tourism recovery practices.

The forum is an important bridge for Guangxi to carry out tourism cooperation and enhance humanistic exchanges with foreign countries. Guangxi plans to further improve its opening-up level, continue to enhance exchanges and cooperation with international tourism organizations to promote the high-quality development of rural tourism, said Li Bin, vice chairman of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

Facing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on tourism industry, Guangxi has made various efforts in the epidemic prevention and control and also tourism recovery and development. At the same time, the region has actively taken strong measures to bail out cultural and tourism enterprises from the pandemic hit.

In the first half of 2021, Guangxi received 437 million domestic tourists in total with domestic tourism consumption reaching 493.3 billion yuan, recovering to 102.5 percent and 99.4 percent of the same period in 2019, respectively.

The forum has been successfully held in Guilin for fourteen sessions. Guilin will make good use of this platform to vigorously promote high-quality tourism development, adapt to the new trends in modern tourism, and actively explore the Guilin model which is a deep integration of tourism and rural development, said Zhou Jiabin, secretary of the CPC Guilin Municipal Committee.

Guilin has made important contributions to the sustainable development of tourism and has become a center for tourism research in the Asia-Pacific region, said Zurab Pololikashvili, Secretary-General of the World Tourism Organization(UNWTO) during his video speech.

The forum was co-hosted by the UNWTO and the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), and organized by the People's Government of Guilin and its culture and tourism department.