Sponsored by the Tourism Administration of Sichuan Province and Mianyang Municipal People’s Government, The 3rd Summit of Global Online Travel Agencies was held in Beichuan County, Mianyang, Sichuan from September 15 to 17 with the theme of “Smart Tourism, Connecting the Future.” Based on the idea of “innovation and efficiency,” the summit will give priority to enhance the cooperation between the tourism system of Sichuan and global online travel agencies.
Senior executives from global famous websites, online travel agencies, airlines and other tourism and IT-related enterprises, namely Google, Baidu, Facebook, Abacus, Ctrip, Qunar, Hana Tour, JTB, etc. gathered in Beichuan County and discussed in-depth new challenges and opportunities for the global tourism industry brought by online technologies. Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, a professor at the University of Oxford and author of “Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think,” was invited to the summit and delivered a speech based on the summit theme. Doctoral supervisor Lv Benfu, Professor of School of Management, the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Hao Kangli, Director General of the Tourism Administration of Sichuan Province also delivered keynote speeches. All the summit participants took part in several forums on different themes. The summit also featured an interactive experience zone which showcased concepts of up-to-date IT applied in various tourism products, and achievements made in smart travel in Sichuan. Sichuan landscape management companies, travel agencies and hotels also conducted exchanges with domestic and foreign OTAs to foster better understanding and cooperation with each other.
On Sep 17, summit participants visited Beichuan Qiang Town, the National AAAAA Tourist Attraction to experience great changes of the tourism sector in Beichuan brought by post-earthquake reconstruction.
