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| REVIEW ON THE MASTER PLAN OF TOURISM DEVELOPMENT FOR SHANDONG PROVINCE, CHINA |
| WU Bi-hu, ZHANG Wei |
| Research Center for Tourism Development and Planning, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China |
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Abstract It is a new phenomenon in the domain of tourism planning in China that more and more international consultants/consulting companies enter into the country to help make development plans to lo cal clients at every levels. Following those of Tibetan Autonomous Region and Sichuan Province, The Master Plan of Tourism Development for Shandong Province, China, prepared by the International Consulting Company Hoff and Overgaard of Denmark with World Tourism Organization (WTO) as executing agency, was completed at the end of 2000 and evaluated at the beginning of 2001. The outputs of this international project stimulated hot debates immediately after its opening to the public. Against this background, the authors attempt to illustrate w here the strength and weakness of this plan are, thereby helping domestic experts or planners to better understand such plans, and helping foreign consultants to provide better service for local customers. It was unique, the authors argue, in the framework and the concept of the planning, although there do have some shortcomings unavoidable in it. The text of the plan is comprised of fours parts, i.e., twenty-year, ten-year, five-year tourism plans and a supporting system for its implementation.Compared with domestic counterparts, it sets high priority to the five-year action plan, which makes it easier to be taking off the ground. With the goal of the plan to increase competitiveness of Shandong in international arena of tourism market, it emphasized strongly contemporary international standards and development concepts.For example, sustainable tourism development is the focus of the plan. Moreover, the experts of the plan dare to straightforwardly criticize unreasonable projects of the local planning counterparts, arguing that the lifestyles of the local residents were essentially tourism resources, and respected fully the interests/ benefits of the local people. On the other hand, the authors argue that it is open to debate on several parts of the master plan, such as positioning for products, spatial structure of tourist areas, and market predicting, since the western planners faced difficulties in understanding deeply the Chinese Culture, especially the Confucianist culture originated in the province and demand of Chinese domestic tourist market.
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Received: 29 March 2002
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2003, Vol. 18 
