Tibet expects 15 mn tourists by 2015
By IANSFriday, January 14, 2011
BEIJING - Tibet plans to upgrade facilities for visitors and develop more tourist destinations to attract 15 million tourists by 2015, generating some 16 billion yuan ($2.4 billion), the local tourism bureau has said.
Between 2001 and 2005, the Chinese government earmarked 350 million yuan to Tibet, in China’s southwest, to improve its tourism sector, Xinhua reported.
Over the past five years, the region received 21.25 million tourists, 1 million of which were from abroad. Tourist numbers have increased 30.6 percent each year on average over the period.
A total of 22.62 billion yuan was generated from tourism in the five-year period, with an average annual increase of 29.8 percent.
In 2010 alone, tourists to Tibet numbered 6.85 million, up 380 percent from 2005. In that year 7.14 billion yuan was generated from tourism, up 370 percent from five years earlier.
According to the bureau, tourism accounted for 14.1 percent of Tibet’s GDP in 2010.
