Private eye: Sight-seeing to increase in suburbs

Editor's Note: As the novel coronavirus outbreak has been gradually contained in China, China Daily website has invited several executives from Chinese private firms to share their views and experiences fighting the coronavirus, limiting the outbreak's impact on their companies and their business strategies this year. This series hopes to provide insight into how China has taken supportive measures to help private enterprises deal with the epidemic.

How has the novel coronavirus affected your business in China?

The tourism and service industry was ravaged by COVID-19 including in the Spring Festival holidays and the May Day holidays. As an enterprise whose major businesses are in hospitality and tourism, the Qingtongshan Grand Valley Scenic Area has been greatly impacted by the epidemic, and born remarkable stress, because our hotels were out of operation during Spring Festival and the scenic area was closed.

What measures have you taken to deal with the situation?

We have now resumed our businesses according to national regulations for disease prevention and control, allowing tourists up to 30 percent of our maximum reception capacity to visit. Anyone who plans to visit has to book tickets one day ahead.

At major paths or passages in the hotels and the Qingtongshan Grand Valley Scenic Area, we set up eye-catching posts, reminding visitors to protect themselves from the epidemic. We check the body temperature of every visitor before they enter the scenic area if he or she can present a health QR code on the phone. There are special personnel deployed to disinfect the scenic area and hotels.

Are supportive measures from the government and financial bodies helpful to your enterprise?

Our enterprise has been included as a designated entity for qualified development by the Licheng district government of Jinan, East China's Shandong province. They had discussions with us many times, in the hope to help us overcome problems. With their help, we had set up tourist medication office and woodpecker workstations.

What kind of policy support to help your business would you like to see from China?

We hope the government will introduce more supportive policies in promotion, discount and resource integration for tourism scenic spots and service industries, to help us to recover swiftly from the epidemic.

What expectations do you have for your company's business in the future?

We found tourists tend to choose leisure travel or cultural and sports activities. As many as 30 percent of tourists will be motivated by leisure after COVID-19, topping the shares of the total population of those engaged in outings, followed by 24 percent for sight-seeing.

Domestic travel, travel by a private car and riding a high-speed train will be the highest proportions, given the serious global pandemic situation.

We are a mountain scenic area, so compared with indoor counterparts, we have seen advantages in reception capacity. As people have spent a lot of time at home, more will choose to go outdoors. We believe travel to suburban areas for sight-seeing will increase as long as we improve the promotion and service quality.

What are your views on the Chinese government's measures to curb and prevent COVID-19 and to stabilize the economy?

We think the performance of Chinese government in fighting against COVID-19 is good enough to astonish the world in terms of unified actions and response speed. Although in early stage of the outbreak, the country sacrificed economic benefits due to business shutdowns, and in return, many lives were saved. The situation is developing for the better, and domestic enterprises are regularly restarting work on the right track. I know for sure, China's economy outlook is promising.