Address by Zheng Xin, Deputy Director General from Guizhou Provincial Department of Culture at International Mountain Tourism Day 2021 World Heritage Mountain (Jinfo Mountain) Summit · International Seminar on Mountain and Hot Spring Wellness Tourism

EDITOR'S NOTE: On May 29 2021, the main activity of the third International Mountain Tourism Day—the World Heritage Famous Mountain (Jinfo Mountain) Summit kicked off in Nanchuan District, Chongqing Municipality, China successfully. Themed with “World Heritage Protection and Green Development of Mountain Tourism”, the Summit got strong support from the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), the Global Tourism Economy Forum (GTEF), the Internationale Organisation Für Volkskunst (IOV) and the China Association of National Parks and Scenic Sites. As an important sub-event of this summit, the International Seminar on Mountain and Hot Spring Wellness Tourism was held with top experts and scholars at home and abroad. They gave keynote speeches and shared frontier observations focusing on mountain tourism, hot spring tourism, and health tourism to explore "the integrated development of hot spring wellness, climate wellness, forest wellness and mountain tourism". The speeches will be released in succession to share with industry colleagues.

Zheng Xin, Deputy Director General from Guizhou Provincial Department of Culture delivered an address at International Seminar on Mountain and Hot Spring Wellness Tourism:

Distinguished guests, dear friends, ladies and gentlemen:

Good afternoon!

I am Zheng Xin, and I’m honored to attend this seminar on behalf of Guizhou Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism. Chongqing and Guizhou, two beautiful places, are neighboring to each other, and both possess abundant mountain tourism resources, serving as the spiritual hometown to the tourists who pursue a green and beautiful lifestyle. Guizhou is the initiator of IMTA as well as the place where IMTA is headquartered, and Guizhou has always been devoted to the development of mountain tourism. Today, we gather together at Nanchuan District of Chongqing, the capital of springs with a great talent pool and beautiful natural views, to discuss the future of international mountain spring wellness tourism. It has a profound significance for the recovery and revitalization of mountain tourism in the post-COVID world.

In recent years, spring wellness tourism has gradually become a new consumption focus and growth point of the tourism sector. In particular, as the society advances and people’s living standard improves, normalized prevention and control will be a common part of our life, which further enhances our health awareness. Against such backdrop, we will pay a closer attention to health, which means in the tourism sector, mountain spring wellness tourism will definitely become one of the top choices of all tourists. Therefore, promoting mountain spring wellness tourism to embrace new tendencies, face new challenges, and make new breakthroughs, is critical to achieving high-quality development of tourism.

Spring wellness is low-carbon, environmentally friendly, helpful for health maintenance, and suitable for multi-time consumption. And, it is influential to plenty of relevant industries, able to create many job vacancies, and outstanding in development potential, thus being widely praised as a “sunrise industry” or a “green industry.” At present, spring tourism is transforming from a leisure tourism type into a combination of leisure, entertainment, wellness, and vacation, becoming a new focus of the massive health sector. Chongqing, as the Hot Spring Capital of China and the World, enjoys the highest concentration of hot spring resources in China, making it the perfect place to promote mountain spring wellness tourism. Guizhou, on the other hand, enjoys hot springs filled with healthy microelements like radon, sulfur, iron, calcium, strontium, selenium, copper, and zinc. The hot spring water reaches China’s drinking water sanitary standard, and some even reaches China’s mineral water standard. The water temperature remains at 40-55 &4u:2103, able to assist treating chronic rheumatism, lumbar muscle strain, and coronary heart diseases. Taking a bath in hot springs warms up your body and drives off the chill in winter, releases your stress and helps you sleep at night, and recovers your stamina when you are tired. In the future, Chongqing and Guizhou will join hands in promoting marketization in terms of industrial interaction, opening up, and cooperation, continue to draw on each other’s advantages and achieve a mutual-benefit and win-win result.

According to President Xi, we must hold the two bottom lines—development and ecology, decide on industries that are the most beneficial to the local residents, and strive to strike a balance between enriching the public and maintaining the beautiful ecology. Seeking high-quality development of mountain spring wellness tourism is, therefore, our choice, which has been agreed and accepted extensively both in China and around the world. In terms of holding the bottom line of development, mountain spring wellness tourism is a critical pillar that supports the transformation and upgrade of mountain tourism. In terms of holding the bottom line of ecology, mountain spring wellness tourism is a pivotal carrier that facilitates building ecological environment, helps construct an ecological economic system centered on making ecology an industry and making every industry ecological, and keeps satisfying people’s needs of a beautiful ecological environment, sound ecological products, and premium ecological services.

Hot spring resources are mostly scattered in impoverished areas. Mountain spring wellness tourism has a long industry chain, and it is able to provide a lot of jobs and involve many different sectors, flexible in solutions, and high in efficiency. So, giving full play to these resources to develop mountain spring wellness tourism can definitely turn lucid waters and lush mountains into invaluable assets. It is an effective and far-sighted solution to achieve poverty alleviation through industry, and help impoverished people shake off poverty. Constructing a mechanism of interests shared by both impoverished people and mountain spring wellness tourism can help poor mountain people find a job nearby to serve the development of this industry, help expand the market of aquaculture and animal husbandry, agricultural product processing, and service, so as to benefit local mountain residents by increasing their income.

Chongqing and Guizhou stick to integration of culture and tourism, strive to reach world-class standard, and keep upgrading “hot spring + wellness,” improving hot spring culture, increasing supply for hot spring tourism, and upgrading tourism consumption, by means of innovating mechanism, elements, business types, management, and service. In doing so, we try to be more fruitful and experienced, and we have unfolded a new chapter for mountain spring wellness tourism in Chongqing and Guizhou. Next, we hope to initiate both domestic and international exchange and cooperation, promote the integrated development between spring and other sectors, facilitate relevant hot spring industries like hot spring tourism, hot spring culture, hot spring wellness, hot spring agriculture, hot spring aquaculture, hot spring cosmetic medicine, and hot spring equipment manufacturing, in a bid to elevate the hot spring industry onto the path of premium development.

I believe, through today’s exchange and discussion, we can have a deeper understanding about each other, and shall initiate deeper cooperation projects. I wish that everyone present can participate in the discussion by making speeches and proposing suggestions, to jointly reap new fruits of international mountain spring wellness tourism. And I also hope that more friends will pay closer attention to this industry, and I’m more than willing to work with everyone for a promising future.

Last, I wish this seminar a complete success, and may you all have a successful career and a healthy body.

Thank you very much!