Shanghai expects tourism boom at the World Expo 2010

China put in its best endeavors to make its financial capital Shanghai as global city and impress 70 million visitors at the Shanghai Expo-2010, the six-month extravaganza that began recently.

Besides Chinese President Hu Jintao, World leaders including French President Nicolas Sarkozy, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso joined the ceremonial opening of the expo.

On a vast tract of landscape beside the Huangpu River, 192 countries including Bangladesh and 50 organizations are taking part in the Expo. Everyday, nearly 800,000 visitors, mostly locals, are expected to be crowded at the city's best known riverside promenade, the historic Bund, to witness the largest world expo in the history.

"We have relentlessly worked to attract 70 million visitors and we remain positive on reaching this target," said Connie Cheng, Vice- director of the Shanghai Tourism Administration.

Shanghai has done its best to impress visitors with the city government already splashing out more than $700 million on renovating the Bund riverfront, as well a whopping $45 billion to upgrade transport and infrastructure.

While Shanghai has stripped hawkers and various eyesores off its streets, as Beijing did before the Olympics, the event has not targeted primarily for an international audience.

Officials expect only 5 percent of their targeted 70 million visitors to be from outside China.

They said much of their tourism promotional efforts have been targeted at the potential of China's domestic tourists to make a trip to Shanghai for the expo. A convoy of "Expo caravans" set off from Shanghai this month touring the neighboring regions and marketing the World Expo to ordinary Chinese.

Officials acknowledge, however, that the showcase exhibition, complete with musical fountains from France and bratwurst sausage from Germany, will be beyond the means of many Chinese.

An average one-day ticket for the Shanghai World Expo costs 160 yuan ($23.50), a princely sum to pay for the country's low income groups. Cheng said she has targeted residents living in Shanghai's neighboring rich coastal provinces to form the bulk of domestic tourists.

"As a whole, we have put our hopes on tourists from the neighboring Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces," she said. "These two provinces are one of the wealthiest in China and people there can travel to Shanghai quite conveniently."

However, the concern of the expo organizers was "how to balance the largest participation ever with a quality exposition," said Vicente Gonzalez Losecrtales, secretary general of International Exhibitions Bureau.

 

Sourced=New-Station