Another round of promotion of Yichang—a city with a large tourism industry— will make increasing number of visitors spend more time lingering in such a lovely and beautiful city.

　　Against a general background that the structural fluctuation in tourism market in China grew, tourism industry and tourism economy slowing down, Yichang enjoyed a boom in the tourism market instead. From January to June, the number of visitors at home and abroad reached 16.3795 million with tourism revenue of 11.862 billion RMB, a year to year increase of 28.37 percent and 32.83 percent respectively. “This is a breakthrough and we really thrived on delicate construction, dynamic marketing, and considerate service,” said Liu Bing, the Director of the Administrative Committee of the Three Gorges Tourism Resort and Municipal Travel Bureau. According to his introduction, despite the fact that Yichang is a city rich in tourism resources, boasting its three national 5A scenic spots and twelve national 4A scenic spots, its conditions such as relatively scattered resources, lack of products diversity hinder its tourism resources as a brand from producing satisfying publicity effect.

　　How to make a breakthrough in the marketing of tourism resources in Yichang?

　　For the previous years, Yichang Travel Bureau has actively helped tourism enterprises carrying out integration of resources by means of making planning, offering guidance and providing policy support. With the help of Travel Bureau, the Yangtze River Three Gorges Tourism Company succeeded in integrated management of its tourism resources, for example, Three Gorges Dam, Jiuwan Stream, Qu’yuan’s Hometown; Guomao Group succeeded in integrated management of its tourism resources, such as Three Gorges Waterfall, Golden Lion Cave; Material Group succeeded in integrated management of Chexi Folk Custom Tour Site and Qinglongxia Scenic Spot; Xingfa Group succeeded in integrated management of Chaotianhou Drifting Scenic Spot, Wang Zhaojun Village; Three Gorges New Starting Point Travel Company succeeded in integrated management of Three Visitors’ Cave, Land of Idyllic Beauty, Happy Valley; Gezhouba International Travel Company succeeded in integrated management of Gezhouba Hotel, Pinghu Hotel, Pinghu Sightseeing Boats Company, Pinghu International Travel Company. And Yichang Transportation Group successfully becomes a listed company raising money for its tourism resources, namely, Three Gorges Dam, Gezhouba Dam and Three Gorges Scenic Spot after integrating its operation in wharf, sightseeing boat and tourist transportation.

　　“We believe delicate construction is the best way to attract our visitors,” the head of one scenic spot explains that the reason why they are more favorable to the idea that delicate construction rather than pompous decoration should be the very sight the tourists more willing to see. To be sure, for example, visitors would get a totally different feeling even towards the common fence at the scenic spot, whether made of wood or of cement.

　　Take the Three Gorges Folk Custom Tour Site for example. To be natural is one of its characteristics, whose newly-built trails for visitors and Bawang Mountain Fastness make tourists feel natural, simple yet dignified, just like visiting historic relics and this can’t do without the art designer they have particularly invited from August First Film Studio. Another instance is the 66 Degrees North Latitude Island, a scenic spot at Changyang County. In the process of construction, when a grown-up jujube tree was in the way of the wooden trestle, they dug a hole nearby so that the tree would not be removed, which is a symbol of the builders’ humanistic concern, respect for the nature, and prudence in pursue of beauty.

　　And in 2012, Yichang Government took the lead in setting up the so-called “Fall in Love with Yichang” an alliance of the city and tourism marketing in Hubei Province. It is an organization initiated by tourism department, which would be in charge of the marketing of tourism resources in Yichang, in order to solve the problem of having difficulty in promoting Yichang’s scenic spots, because of the disadvantages of each scenic spot unit not working together but operating separately. Up to now, a handful of key scenic spots such as the Three Gorges Dam, the Three Gorges Folk Custom Tour Site and Qingjiang River Gallery Scenic Resort have entered into the alliance.

　　“Our original idea is that with a strong alliance, we can pool our money together so that we can counter the situation of lack of sufficient budget for advertisement. But, when the organization started to play its role, we found that apart from money issue, a great many other problems such as want of talents in tourist industry, limited brand impact of tourism, and poor marketing influence which had afflicted the senior managers for a long time were settled as well.” Liang Yi, the Deputy Director of Municipal Travel Bureau confesses that it is wiser and safer to form an alliance like this, in the context of disability for each single scenic spot unit to promote and market itself up to the scale of the country, coupled with quite a few problems when carrying out presentation activities alone in other cities, including a lot of waste due to repetitive advertising and rarely getting expected influence.

　　“Fall in Love with Yichang” has become another slogan of the travel industry in Yichang, for “Love” not only bears people’s good feelings, but makes a city full of humanistic care, which exactly reflects the cultural connotation of this city. Because of this, this slogan is popular with a growing number of travelers.

　　It was at the Central China Tourism Fair last year that the alliance came into play for the first time.

　　Then the organization went to ten big cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, etc. to proceed with its in-depth presentation, each of which was no other than a mini travel expo, drawing hundreds of visitors each time.

　　And Yichang experiences a long time prosperity in tourism market this year and visitor from all parts of the country by means of group travel, self-driving travel and weekend’s excursion pour in Yichang’ s hotels at all levels which leads in room shortage in many hotels. According to a recent survey made by Hubei Tourism Administration and Tsinghua University, Yichang enjoys the highest degree of satisfaction in Hubei Province.

　　Seeing what has happened, more and more scenic spot units and travel agents are willing to join the organization. So far, the member of the alliance has increased from “six plus one” in the past to present “eight plus one” (one refers to Yichang Travel Bureau), and the government-funded subsidy for advertisement of tourism in Yichang has mounted to twenty million RMB, as against previous fifteen million RMB.

　　From what we have mentioned above, we are confident that the tourism in Yichang will have a more bright future with increasing number of visitors to Yichang and they will fall in love with this city.