Rankings to be released at news conferences, online and in reports

The World Tourism Cities Federation came up with an evaluation system on Thursday in Beijing to better strengthen the federation's say worldwide and guide the development of cities with special attractions.

It mainly covers tourism prospects, development potential, supporting facilities, degrees of satisfaction and publicity. The World Tourism City Development Index is meant to promote the standardization of tourism in cities, according to the federation's council.

The index will reveal the balance and imbalance between the development of the tourism industry and that of society and the economy. It will be published periodically with the rankings being made public through news conferences, websites and annual reports.

"Tourism has an important momentum for a city's economic and social development - and development will be an ongoing theme for the future of tourism cities," said Shao Qiwei, head of the China National Tourism Administration, during a news conference on Thursday.

The index is based on careful studies of several rankings of world cities, including the Global Power City Index and The Economist's Most Livable City Index. It is composed of six indexes: the tourism prosperity index, the tourism development potential index, the tourism attraction index, the support for tourism index, the tourism satisfaction index and the tourism awareness index.

The tourism prosperity index reflects the current and future development of the tourism industry and can be determined by the overall prospects for tourism over a period of time, with factors covering the number of inbound and domestic tourist numbers, inbound and domestic tourism revenue, hotel room occupancy rates, average hotel price fluctuation rates, inbound and domestic tourist growth rates and inbound tourism revenue growth rates.

The tourism development potential index focuses on the annual inbound tourist growth rate, the ratio between the gross level of the service industry and gross domestic product, as well as the international air passenger population.

The tourism attraction and support for tourism indexes examine visa issuance facilitation, airline numbers as well as environment quality.

In addition, the tourism satisfaction and awareness indexes mainly study tourists' overall satisfaction, a tourism city's image recognition and influence.

As more research on cities has been produced in recent years and increasing attention has been brought to the ranking of the cities published by influential organizations, it's necessary for each to come up with its own plans to provide more services to tourism cities while better evaluating and benchmarking cities worldwide in terms of tourism development level and progress.

As the first international tourism organization that unites tourism cities and develops rigorous and valid tourism cities, the World Tourism Cities Evaluation System project was assessed by the Committee of Experts of the World Tourism Cities Federation in June.

The world tourism city development evaluation system focusing on serving tourists and promoting sustainability will become the bond and bridge to connect the federation member cities and help municipal mayors and city planners to understand the advantages and disadvantages of tourism development while becoming the basis for tourism planning and the medium for destination marketing, said the council.

zhengxin@chinadaily.com.cn