From April 10th to 17th 2014, Sanjiang Urban Daily has published the interview with Professor Deng Mingyan in two issues under the series title Forge Leshan’s Boutique with Foreign Gems, for the column Forum for International Tourist Destination Development.

When asked about how to borrow useful experience from other countries for tourist destination development, Deng said that to set up sceneries with high symbol value was very important, as well as to fulfill modern tourists’ consuming desire that was symbol value oriented. Deng said it was like Lake Geneva and Mount Fuji.

“They are highly symbolized that they are the symbols of tourism in the certain countries, and are also the must-go sites for tourists who want to travel toJapanorSwitzerland. So, they are indispensible for tourism destination marketing. In this case, while digging in to the cultural connotation in tourist sites, people should make the sites more symbolized. That is, as exhibiting the culture of the destinations, we should also emphasis on symbolized sceneries or cultural zones in both urban and rural areas.”

How to borrow the experience in promoting tourism products worldwide and building up urban tourism scenery? Confronting these questions, Deng said, experiential was an important element in attraction quality of the tourism products.

“After staying by the Lake Geneva for one night, eating next to this beautiful scenery, shopping inGeneva, or appreciating art in museums at the foot ofMount Fuji, you would have very unique experience, because every moment there will become an unforgettable memory.”

Deng added that it was also essential to build up a beautiful context or atmosphere. For example, she said, tourists would definitely attracted byGeneva, which is an extremely beautiful city with a perfect and poetic combination of mountains, water and city.

About how to appropriately handle the relationship between urban city and tourist sites especially for the city Leshan that has both cultural and natural heritages, Deng said urban tourism was very essential, and it could significantly escalate the regional tourism in heritage sites.

“Urban cities should rely on their attractive and impressive heritage sites that are both cultural and natural, set up a tourism industry system, exploit the potential of tourism product, and develop urban and countryside tourism.

“At the same time, when the tourism demand is polybasic, what is irreplaceable for the sustainable heritage tourism lie in tourism facilities, tourism activities and city facilities.

“Additionally, only if the tourism interaction integration was set up, and the world heritage brand was put into good use, the internationalize of the world heritage tourism and the competitiveness of Leshan’s world heritage tourism can be highly promoted.”

Further more, about the question how far Leshan has to go before it reaches an international tourist site, Deng said that except for the insufficiency in hardware and soft core, Leshan’s problem was not yet a highly interactive place for global-regional communication.

“To establish more global-regional connections, we should start from the more general concept of tourism, and analyze our advantages. Specifically, that is, to develop conferences and exhibitions that have influence globally, to make good use of tourism resource, to perfect the tourism product system, industry system and market system, and strenthen the Leshan tourist industry.”

Finally, when asked about the question of how to make the Leshan tourist products stand out from many others, Deng said that the key was to cultivate the cultural tourism brand.

“What can be more powerful to impress the foreign tourist? Nothing can compare with brand. A supreme brand could attract prospective tourist at the first sight, provide tourists with unique experience and quality time, and most importantly make the tour unforgettable.”