CRI听力:Chongqing's Tourism Ambition

Take the cable car across the Yangtze River in Chongqing and you'll get a sense of just how big this city has become …. The river frontage is as impressive as any of the major cities around the world with skyscrapers of the central business district, jostling for position alongside plush hotels, busy restaurants and traditional bustling squares full of locals and tourists.

You also get a sense of its location… at the meeting point of two major rivers – the Yangtze and the Jialing … the city sprawling across gorges and plateaus, and eventually in the distance, you can just make out stunning countryside.

20 million people live and work in the municipality … that's 20 million who now, with the building of the moderately prosperous society, and with greater leisure time and money … want to play.

Chongqing is not short of tourist resources, including the impressive Three Gorges Dam, the Dazu Rock Carvings and its unique cuisine - most notably the famous Chongqing Hot Pot.

The building of the Three Gorges Dam – apart from providing much needed energy, also created a popular tourist attraction. 400 kilometres to the east of Chongqing, tour boats to see the man made wonder are big business.

Many cultural relics were moved to higher ground or into museums such as the Three Gorges Museum in Chongqing.

That's where I dound Nina from Austria. She now lives in the city, but was showing her parents the sights.

"Ciqikou is awesome, and the harbor with the small markets, and the urban things. Here this museum is awesome. Also to go a little bit out of Chongqing, I loved Qingdao Gorge, and Black Valley, so it's very nice. "

Tourists today, especially International ones, have increasingly high expectations – they want quality, luxury, entertainment, and an experience. They may also want to be culturally challenged.

This is part of a promotional video for Chongqing – aimed at attracting overseas visitors. It underlines that the city modern, chic, full of amazing experiences and bristling with an estimated 12,700 registered hotels, 62 of which fall into the five star category.

For the head of Chongqing's Hotel Industry Association, Mei Feng Lin, the key is raising standards.

"The first thing we should do is to improve our service level and service quality. We should standardize everything we do so that when foreign guests come here, we have the ability to provide service to them. We certainly don't want things to end up in a poor communication because we don't know the language. It will be a painful experience for both hotel reception and the guests themselves.

The best way to do that, she says, is to set up and enforce standards.

"We are trying to do several things now, but the first thing is to establish city level hotel industry standards under the national standard. Under the new city level standard, we want to bring together different types hotels, including boutique hotel, homestay apartment, and chain hotel to define standards. There will be different standards for each genre. Based on all of the standards and regulations, we can supervise the industry. "

Binbin is a hostel owner in Chongqing. He's hoping to tap into the relatively unexploited low-end overseas market.

"Youth hostelling is widely accepted by foreigners, young people, students and backpackers. Last week we hosted a group of football players from UK, they were here to play a match at Chongqing Datianwan sports stadium. This is the second time we received a group of foreign guests at the hostel. "

As the tourism sector in China matures, so expectations become greater. That puts pressure on existing attractions to improve their quality. But the latest figure show that Chongqing, like it's industry and commerce, is beginning to get it right.

For CRI this is Bob Jones in Chongqing.