On 27 November, Liang Lingfeng, Party Secretary and Chairman of Guangzhou Lingnan Business Travel Investment Group, delivered a keynote speech titled "Focus on Dual Circulations, Aim for High Quality, and Create a Bright Future of Integrated Culture-Tourism Development in Asia" at the Culture, Education, and Tourism Development Forum of the Asia Youth Leaders Forum 2021.

The full speech is as below.

Dear dignitaries, distinguished guests, respectable young leaders, ladies, and gentlemen,

Good afternoon! Welcome to LN Garden Hotel, Nansha. As the person in charge of providing accommodation and other services for this event, I hope our services bring you a wonderful, exquisite, homelike experience. And I hope that besides your splendid feasting of ideas, you can also have a pleasant business and travel experience in Guangzhou. Also, I'm honored to be invited to the Asia Youth Leaders Forum. The excellent speeches by experts, scholars, and young friends have given me quite a few inspirations.

The Guangzhou Lingnan Business Travel Investment Group that I work for is a large state-owned comprehensive commerce and tourism investment group in Guangzhou. The culture-tourism business under the group has ranked among the top 20 Chinese tourism companies for 12 consecutive years, and its commerce business ranks the 18th among the top 100 Chinese retailers. Our group owns two companies listed on the main board – Lingnan Holdings and Guangzhou Grandbuy; culture-tourism brands like CGZL; star hotels like LN Garden Hotel, China Hotel Guangzhou, and LN Dongfang Hotel; large conference and exhibition centers like Guangzhou Baiyun International Convention Center; two mid- and high-end retail brands – Grandbuy and Friendship; and well-known commercial or food companies, like Grandbuy Logistics, Grandbuy Exhibition Trade, Xin Da Xin, Lingnan Suiliang, and Jammy Chai.

At present, our group is harnessing the new opportunities brought by the campaigns of building Guangzhou into an international consumption center and building the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area into a high-quality living circle fit for living, working, and traveling. Our group is going along with the trends of dual circulations and consumption upgrading in the new age, focusing on providing quality services for a beautiful life, and devoting itself towards the goal of becoming a first-class enterprise in China that provides cultural, commercial, and tourism services with strong international competitiveness and influence. Our group is a new enterprise established last month by the merger of two companies under the municipal government: Guangzhou Lingnan Group and Guangzhou Commerce Investment Holdings Group, the latter of which is itself a merger of Grandbuy Department Store and Guangzhou Friendship Store. To help you better understand what I'm about to say, just now I gave a brief introduction to the businesses of our group. Now, with this rare opportunity, I would like to share some of my thoughts about some exploration and practices of our group under the title "Focus on Dual Circulations, Aim for High Quality, and Create a Bright Future of Integrated Culture-Tourism Development in Asia". I look forward to your advice.

Tourism is one of the important pillars of the global economy. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the growth rate of the global tourism industry exceeded that of the global GDP for 9 consecutive years. The Asia-Pacific region enjoys the highest growth rate in tourism in the world. Asia has a population of 4.5 billion and a GDP of 32 trillion US dollars, which leads to huge demands for travel. 550 sites of World Cultural Heritage, 250 items of intangible cultural heritage, diversified natural landscapes, and the unique Asian cultures have laid a foundation for the comprehensive, coordinated, sustainable development of the Asian tourism market. For a long time, the Asian countries have been working constantly for convenient visa application, complete transportation network, mature public services, and favorable business environment. This has made exchange and cooperation in tourism play an increasingly important role in cultural and people-to-people exchange as well as dialogue between nations and between civilizations in Asia.

Despite the direct impact of the pandemic, we still believe that the efforts made by all countries to prevent and control the spread will help people return to normal as soon as possible, and that Asia will remain the fastest region in the world to recover in tourism and the region with the most active tourism development.

The growth of tourism is inseparable from market players' constant innovation in investment, projects, products, and services. While damaging the travel industry seriously, the pandemic has also accelerated fundamental changes in the industry and brought about new ways of consumption and new consumer demands. It's particularly noteworthy that the supply and demand of high-quality tourism products are going upward clearly. According to the operation data of our group, this year both general customized tours and premium customized tours have shown exponential growth. The numbers of parent-child tours and academic tours have doubled compared with 2019. The revenues of resort hotels have shown a year-on-year increase of over 90% than 2019. Consumer demand for travel has changed from "availability" to "quality". People's new expectations for a better life have opened up new space for tourism and raised new requirements for the high-quality development of tourism.

About the future of tourism, we believe that companies should adopt the new development paradigm of dual circulations; leverage the new opportunity of integration of culture, commerce, tourism, and sports; and focus on the new trend of technology-based development. Companies should also match their products with the new demands for a better life and give consumers a great experience in the sense of safety, fulfillment, satisfaction, and happiness. This will be an important direction of future development. To this end, our group has resorted to integration, intelligence, personalization, meticulousness, and international resources to realize the innovation and upgrade of the culture-tourism industry in response to the challenges of the pandemic. We will develop into a comprehensive cultural, commercial, and travel service provider and build a pan-tourism ecosystem leading in scale and quality and with diverse business forms. We will continuously improve the quality and cultural and technological content of tourism products, develop more, better, high-quality, sustainable tourism products and services, and realize high-quality integrated development of culture and tourism.

Regarding the integration of different industries, we will vigorously promote the integration of esports, culture, sports, and agriculture. On the basis of traditional demands for eating, living, transporting, sightseeing, shopping, and entertainment, we will develop six new elements: commerce, health, learning, leisure, sentiment, and novelty. We will build a pan-tourism ecosystem, creating new travel types such as healthcare tours, academic tours, ice and snow tours, self-drive tours, night tours, countryside tours, ecological tours, and customized tours. In so doing, we can meet the diverse travel demands of consumers with increasingly sophisticated products, allowing for different ways of travel, wide array of products, innovation of resources, and maximization of value.

In terms of intelligence, we will reinforce the application of big data, cloud computing, Internet of Things, 5G, and other new-generation information technologies. We will explore cloud-based travel, exhibitions, and livestreaming and optimize accurate responses to consumer experience. We will develop the new industry, pattern, and business form of smart travel. We will continuously provide tourists with interactive, multi-channel, information-rich intelligent travel experience, to make travel information more transparent, trips more convenient, services more accessible, experiences more novel, and playtime more secure, which will allow tourists to enjoy an intelligent, convenient, and beautiful life anytime, anywhere.

In terms of personalization, we will pay attention to matching supplies and demands and provide consumers with increasingly personalized, in-depth, specialized products and services. For example, we will launch high-end customized brands and set up personal-butler teams to provide consumers with place-to-place and one-on-one personal services as well as meticulous one-stop travel-butler services. We will create a platform for high-end members at home and abroad, providing them with premium, customized route-planning and accommodation. We will launch the programs of intelligent hotels, shared apartments, and social space that feature cultural creativity, business networking, accommodation, catering, health services, entertainment, technology, and art, to meet the different travel demands in an all-round manner.

In terms of meticulousness, we will pay great attention to details to ensure quality. We will apply the attitude of being meticulous and improving continuously and the craftsmanship of attention to every detail to systems and standards, facilities, product design, service process, etc. We will develop a full-dimension service evaluation system that considers the six elements of eating, living, transporting, sightseeing, shopping, and entertainment. We will deconstruct the key service links that may affect consumer experience, and formulate detailed requirements and regulations so that both commercial operators and consumers have a complete, measurable set of standards and traceable, reliable evaluation benchmark. In so doing, we can continuously improve customers’ satisfaction and loyalty.

In terms of international resources, we will strengthen international cooperation. We will establish strategic partnership with more overseas companies in tourism, conference, exhibition, accommodation, and other fields, to improve the abilities of global resource allocation and business collaboration and increase overseas travel routes for consumers. Also, in the present context of implementing the new development paradigm of dual circulations, we will strengthen cooperation with well-known overseas companies and introduce premium brands and products, such as the Asia-Pacific selection of Bocuse d'Or competition known as the "Culinary Olympics", Michelin restaurants, World Gourmet Alliance, famous chefs from all over the world, etc. This will bring local consumers new dining methods and unique experiences, allowing them to enjoy international products and services without going abroad.

At present, our destination management network spans more than 100 countries and regions. Our group has been designated by the tourism authority of 86 nations and regions as the chief or important partner in China. We have business cooperation with 89 airlines around the world. Before the pandemic, we delivered 1.6 million tourists to destinations all over the world every year. We hope to have more exchange and cooperation with companies and individuals from all sectors in Asian countries. Let's work together to build, create, win, and share, for the high-quality development of Asian culture, commerce, and tourism.

As pointed out by President Xi Jinping, tourism is a bridge to spread civilizations, make cultural exchange, and enhance friendship, as well as an important indicator for the improvement of people's living standards. Tourism is a comprehensive industry and an important driving force for economic development. The tourism industry of each Asian country is dependent of each other, and the Asia-Pacific region is at the forefront of the global tourism recovery. Tourism makes for a more energetic economy, more dynamic world, and better life.

Lingnan Business Travel Group looks forward to working with our peers in the industry and friends from all walks of life. Centering on the belief that "tourism makes the world better", we will focus on opening-up and innovation and create a better future for Asia through the strengths of our youths.

In the end, I'd like to thank the organizing committee again for this opportunity. Thank you!