Sichuan formulates its future tourism vision recently with natural ecology and historical culture as the two keys, including Sanxingdui, Jiuzhaigou and Giant Panda and makes giant panda the real "Tourism Ambassador" of Sichuan.
Sichuan is giant panda's hometown and 85% of the over 1,000 extant giant pandas live in south Sichuan. Now Sichuan has set up 17 giant panda reservations, including Wolong, Fengtongzhai and Wanglang. It is said that giant panda should be the key for Sichuan tourism to merge into international tourism market especially EU and America market.
Resources is not a tourism brand. Tourism brand is unique, monopolist and can not be copied, and it must own fine environment to meet the demand of accommodation, travel, purchase and entertainment. But Sichuan's 17 giant panda reservations are in remote area hardly accessible for travelers. Wanglang Natural Reservation built a small hotel last year with the help of the UN and can only accommodate 150 people each day.
Wolong Giant Panda is better. It has favourable traffic conditions and 3 hotels with the accommodation capacity of 2,000 people a day. Last April, Premier Zhu said the present pens feeding should be bettered and let giant pandas live in half wild environment, improving the tourism function of reservation. On Oct. 22, the first phase of China Giant Panda Garden finished and honored guests of Western Forum became the first visitors.
Giant panda enjoys a high reputation in the world, but few people know giant panda is in Sichuan. So it is urgent to establish giant panda's image in Sichuan's tourism and expand its publicity. The present propaganda is lack of popularity and interest. At the same time, as a marketing tactics, giant panda tourism commodities made in Sichuan are lack of characteristics.
According to director of Sichuan Tourism Bureau, developing giant panda's travel value while strengthening its protection is of bright future.
(Sichuan News net 10/31/2000)
