CHINA: Shanghai gears up for tourism boom as it gets set to host the World Expo 2010

Record ID: 1537539

  • Title: CHINA: Shanghai gears up for tourism boom as it gets set to host the World Expo 2010
  • Date: 1st April 2010
  • Summary: SHANGHAI, CHINA (FILE) (REUTERS) TOP VIEW OF SHANGHAI WORLD EXPO 2010 SITE CHINESE PAVILION (IN RED) MORE OF EXPO SITE
  • Embargoed: 16th April 2010 12:18
  • Keywords:
  • Location: China
  • Country: China
  • Topics: Travel / Tourism
  • Reuters ID: LVA2UESB399FKDJ51Q91VA40UK1R
  • Aspect Ratio: 4:3
  • Story Text: With a month to go before the World Expo 2010, China's financial capital Shanghai is looking to seize the limelight with its promises of glitz and glamour for this year's global exhibition.
    During the past weekend, crowds of locals and tourists crowded the city's best known riverside promenade, the historic Bund, to witness its reopening and rebirth in time for the Expo.
    Shanghai is doing its best to impress visitors with the city government already splashing out more than 700 million U.S. dollars on renovating the Bund riverfront, as well a whopping 45 billion U.S. dollars to upgrade transport and infrastructure.
    The city's makeover is complete with the reopening of the Bund and now officials are going all out to attract the tourist dollar to the Expo to fuel China's latest publicity project.
    If China was serious about creating a legacy after the Beijing Olympics, it is outshining all its past efforts for the Shanghai World Expo, spending 4.2 billion U.S. dollars on reinventing the world's exhibition fair as a blowout extravaganza.
    While previous expos in Zaragoza and Hanover went largely unnoticed on the global agenda, Shanghai is creating such a promotional ruckus, that countries are going all out to impress an expected 70 million visitors.
    Shanghai tourism officials said they remain confident of achieving their target despite the world still feeling the effects of the global financial crisis.
    "Barring the effects of last year's financial crisis, we feel that there will be a turnaround for the market in this new year. On the first day of this year, our national and municipal tourism officials have announced to the world that 2010 is our World Expo tourism year. With the birth of the World Expo tourism year and its subsequent promotional activities, we are still actively working on activities to attracting 70 million visitors and we remain positive on reaching this target," said Connie Cheng, vice director of the Shanghai Tourism Administration.
    China is the first developing nation to host the World Expo and officials hope the event, held from May 1-Oct 31, will improve Shanghai's position as a global city.
    While Shanghai is stripping hawkers and various eyesores off its streets as Beijing did before the Olympics, the event is not targeted primarily for an international audience. Officials expect only 5 percent of their expected 70 million visitors to be from outside China.
    And much of their tourism promotional efforts have been targeted at the potential of China's domestic tourists to make a trip to Shanghai for the Expo.
    A convoy of "Expo caravans" have set off from Shanghai this month touring the neighbouring regions and marketing the World Expo to ordinary Chinese.
    "Our caravans will travel through Anhui, Jiangsu and Hebei provinces and finish in Beijing. During the travelling, we will promote the Expo to the public, to our tourism professionals and to the media. We will also have a promotional day for the public and events to market the Expo," said Cheng.
    While Shanghai prides itself on putting on a "World class event," complete with musical fountains from France and bratwurst sausage from Germany, officials admit not all Chinese would be coming for the showcase exhibition.
    An average one-day ticket for the Shanghai World Expo costs 160 yuan (23.50 U.S. dollars), a princely sum to pay for the country's low income groups.
    Cheng said she was targeting residents living in Shanghai's neighbouring rich coastal provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangsu to form the bulk of the domestic tourists.
    "As a whole, we have put our hopes on tourists from the neighbouring Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces. These two provinces are one of the wealthiest in China and people there can travel to Shanghai quite conveniently. Their cities are quite similar in nature with Shanghai and so we hope the tourists from these two provinces can make up 30 percent of the 66.5 million (domestic) tourists that we are aiming for," added Cheng.
    In order to get ready for the tourist influx, in the past year the city has doubled the metro system to 420 kilometres (260 miles) of track and opened a new airport terminal to accommodate tens of thousands of visitors per day.
    And the marketing of the Expo in China has been all glitz and glamour with celebrity endorsements and participating countries going all out to impress.
    Of 191 countries attending, most are investing record amounts to build pavilions, with governments taking the lead in providing the bulk of investment and heads of state promising to make an appearance.
    The Saudi pavilion is the most expensive at 146 million U.S. dollars, while Australia is spending 76 million U.S. dollars and France is shelling out 68 million U.S. dollars.
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