A look at the problems in marketing Gansu Province, China, as a tourist destination.
This paper analyzes the problems in Gansu, a western province in China, to demonstrate why Gansu is not suitable for tourist development. The paper explores the literature and shows how tourism would be in conflict with the government’s past aim to develop it as an industrial center. The paper also discusses how Gansu is a remote destination and its infrastructure does not support the government’s aim to develop tourism in the region.
“Tourism for a country is basically a tool for development by renovating its landscapes. With the contribution of infrastructure development along with heritage conservation, a destination can become a tourist haven. Some times parties in a political economy tend to oppose this area and do not cooperate because they are more interested in social projects or economical projects. In doing so they do not realize that they are foregoing an important tool to enable them to reach their goals. The development of Chinese tourist industry is currently also facing such a dilemma. Researches on the multiple areas in China’s tourist destination promotion show that a tourist destination plays an important part in the contribution to the economic benefit of that region. However without the cooperation of the local people this is not possible. Heritage resource as well as its preservation for instance enables the destination to become a favorite spot or it could become a waste of investment. Tourism development therefore is crucial at the macro level as well as micro level.”