Cruise Tourism Integration and Regional Tourism Integration in the Yangtze River Delta

Abstract

With the characteristics of global nature, openness and interconnectivity, cruise tourism can effectively promote the development of regional tourism integration. 2018 Action Plan for Promoting the Development of Regional Tourism Integration in the Yangtze River Delta signed in December 2017 points out that the Yangtze River Delta needs to realize the regional tourism integration on a larger scale by relying on the “Big Planning”, “Big Brand”, “Big Promotion” and “Big Regulation” and, in particular, increase the inbound tourism turnover by linking up with the Belt and Road Initiative. As the Yangtze River Delta is the leader of mainland China in the aspect of cruise tourism development, the construction of “cruise tourism integration” featured with solid foundation, open market, openness, inclusiveness and unified standard is propitious to the deepening of tourism integration contents and the enhancing of the integrated competitiveness of regional tourism in the Yangtze River Delta. This report mainly refers to the domestic and foreign experience to discuss how to realize the cruise tourism integration in the Yangtze River Delta region. First of all, the relationship between cruise tourism integration and regional tourism integration is analyzed. Then the development experience in domestic tourism integration, EU tourism integration, Florida cruise tourism and European inland river cruise tourism are discussed. Finally, the countermeasures and suggestions for the construction of the cruise tourism integration in the Yangtze River Delta are proposed. The goal is to construct the “Yangtze River Delta Cruise Tourism Economy Circle” in the large market through the two-way interaction between cruise tourism integration and regional tourism integration to get through the bottleneck of tourist sources, resources, information, service, channel and other factors.