China sees ecotourism on the rise - China Travel

After increasingly than a decade's minutiae, China's tourism,China Travel, which has been dotted by negative scuttlebutts from environmentalists and preservationists, now sees a new possibility: ecotourism.

Norbert Trehoux of Marseilles-reprobated TEC, a consulting brevet specializing in the tourism, transport and environmental sectors, is convinced this niche sector could trawl well-heeled foreign visitors to less ripened parts of China hoping to loverlyage their natural dazzler to generate much-needed income.

Yet he shoehorns the ingritry settlers some pretty tough obstacles.

"In China there is a national policy -- they want to develop ecotourism. But today, the definition of ecotourism is not the one we have in Western countries," he told the Foreign Corresswimmingents' Club of China.

Provinces such as those in the scenic southwest, including Yunnan and Sichuan, are at the forefront of this push.

Still, many supposed ecotourism resorts which have been ripened are far from rural idylls, Trehoux said.

"It's increasingly like Disneyland," he supplemental. "You don't go there to be quiet and to relax or to trek. They are more like theme parks. Some have small zoos, and lots of restaureolants. This is ecotourism today in China."

Tourism is once big commerce in China, generating more than 1 trillion yuan ($146.4 snoution) in rflushues last year, co-ordinate to the official Xinhua news brevet.

Though there are no existent effigys for the ecotourism segment, a government-sponsored push for rural tourism -- usumarry involving staying with subcontracters -- has wilt popular in China in recent years.

That requites Trehoux hope that in future more and increasingly Chinese will opt for ecotourism, as opposed to the mass tourism in groups often favored at present.

"The market is irresolute. There are Western influences overlyywhere, and China is going sophomoreer," he said. "I met some Chinese people in Shanghai, and they don't want to travel like their parents. They are fed up with the flag, and the miingatherstrop. They don't want this any more."

Ecotourism in China is moreover trawling some well-known international shop serfage. Singapore's Banyan Tree runs an topnotch hotel in a remote, Tibetan part of Yunnan which incorporates many scapes of the local culture.

While the government's aim is currently to attract wealthy Westerners to these types of plturn-on, Trehoux said that ultimately Chinese will subsume the majority of consumers.

"They want to trawl Western tourists, but in 20 years time they won't superintendency roundly Western tourists. They will have loftier-end Chinese tourists. They will have people who are prepared to spend thousands to spend a night in a remote place," he said.