Rural tourism poverty alleviation must achieve six priorities

The "13th Five-Year Plan" period is the decisive stage for our country to win the battle against poverty. During this period, we should fully tap rural natural and cultural resources, build beautiful villages, open up new paths for rural tourism poverty alleviation, and strike the stone of poverty to turn it into the gold of moderate prosperity.

Tap rural natural ecological resources and traditional cultural connotations, and highlight rural advantages. Compared with bustling metropolises, the advantage of rural tourism lies in the poetic scenery of returning to fields and gardens and picking chrysanthemums by the eastern fence, and in the agricultural civilization of farming and herding, spring sowing and autumn harvest. In rural tourism development, we should build on strengths and avoid weaknesses, and highlight the differences between rural culture and urban culture. We should preserve rural buildings with local characteristics, maintain the simple natural style of the countryside, create a strong atmosphere of rural culture, and try to avoid "large and complete" scale construction. We should deeply explore the humanistic connotations of rural tourism, encourage and support tourism poverty alleviation villages in carrying out folk performances, farming experiences, and festival and celebratory activities with local characteristics, and maintain the unique "farm flavor," "earthy flavor," and "wild flavor" of rural tourism scenic areas.

Create a rural tourism linkage mechanism and a benefit-sharing mechanism, and highlight farmers' interests. Rural areas have tourism advantages, but modern tourism concepts and capital are still needed for development. We should create an open rural tourism linkage mechanism and benefit-sharing mechanism, connect rural landscapes and farmers' resources with modern tourism concepts and capital, promote complementary advantages, and drive poor people toward prosperity. We should support and encourage specialized tourism enterprises to participate in tourism development, give them preferential supporting policies, fully leverage their professional advantages, and drive poor people to participate in tourism development. We should actively promote all kinds of tourism enterprises, public institutions, and social organizations to "pair up" with tourism poverty alleviation villages, and strengthen targeted assistance in areas such as labor employment, procurement of agricultural and sideline products, product development, and publicity and promotion. We should innovate new paths for farmers' property to be invested as shares in poverty alleviation development; farmers' land contract rights, homestead use rights, housing property rights, and farmers' collective resources and assets can all be invested as shares in cooperative tourism development. We should establish a rural tourism benefit-sharing mechanism. Rural tourism development must not exclude the masses; it should focus on poor people benefiting and poor households being lifted out of poverty, and let poor farmers share in the long-term benefits of tourism development.

Expand rural tourism routes and the industrial value chain, and highlight agricultural value. To turn "lucid waters and lush mountains" into "invaluable assets," we must expand the rural tourism value chain and diversify poor farmers' tourism income. We should deeply explore high-quality rural local products and traditional handicrafts, fully leverage the driving and radiating role of rural tourism, build brands for regional specialty agricultural products, snacks, catering, and handicrafts, and achieve product standardization. We should develop rural tourism routes as a whole and form a joint force for rural tourism. Taking Daming County, Hebei Province, designated for poverty alleviation by the Development Research Center of the State Council, as an example, rural tourism and agricultural resources are being integrated in a unified way, developed in clusters, and rural tourism routes are being launched under scientific planning. We should build a rural cultural tourism brand integrating six major themes: ecological agricultural tourism, canal culture, Hui culture, celebrity culture, snack culture, and red culture. We should form a rural tourism industry model combining six major functions: culture, nature, folk customs, leisure, entertainment, and education, provide a regional rural tourism experience with distinctive features and complementary advantages, and enhance the overall appeal of tourism.

Establish a coordinated management and service mechanism for rural tourism, and highlight government functions. Developing rural tourism and implementing tourism poverty alleviation involve many points and broad areas, and require linkage from top to bottom and coordinated advancement. We should strengthen overall planning and joint management. We should establish a coordinated management and service mechanism for rural tourism involving departments such as tourism, agriculture, culture, transportation, planning, land, environmental protection, finance, and development and reform. We should coordinate solutions to issues in tourism poverty alleviation work such as planning linkage, land use guarantees, administrative approval, and integrated use of funds, organically integrate rural tourism work into the overall situation of poverty alleviation, and jointly promote the rapid development of rural tourism. We should do a good job in top-level design and prepare planning schemes. We should actively explore "integration of multiple plans," effectively link rural tourism poverty alleviation plans with local economic and social development plans, overall land use plans, relocation poverty alleviation plans, overall scenic area plans, transportation construction plans, and other special plans, and scientifically prepare special plans for rural tourism poverty alleviation.

Strengthen source market positioning and marketing promotion, and highlight the role of the market. At present, marketing is still a weak link in rural tourism. We should accurately position target sources and actively open up source markets. We should take surrounding large and medium-sized cities as the primary source market, organize rural scenic areas to carry out publicity and promotion in major surrounding source areas, and cooperate with local travel agencies. Local residents traveling should drive outsiders to travel; start first, then grow bigger, then become stronger, demonstrate and drive, and build momentum for tourism poverty alleviation. We should widely open rural tourism marketing channels, take the initiative, actively plan, and conduct centralized display, bundled marketing, and joint promotion of rural tourism products, specialty snacks, and specialty agricultural products. We can use online new media marketing, support and promote internet enterprises' deep participation in tourism poverty alleviation publicity and marketing work, and make full use of online media to carry out publicity and marketing of tourism resources and products.

Improve the infrastructure and sanitary environment of rural tourism, and highlight the taste of demand. Developing rural tourism requires not only "opening the door to see nature," but also "closing the door to modernity." The government should guide through unified planning, improve rural tourism infrastructure, and increase investment in transportation, communications, water and electricity, and other infrastructure in poor areas. We should advance the construction of connecting roads from scenic spots to trunk highways, and ensure that each key village builds parking lots, tourist toilets, centralized garbage collection stations, medical emergency stations, agricultural and sideline local product stores, and tourism signage. We should accelerate the improvement of rural broadband information infrastructure and upgrade and improve tourism reception conditions. We should increase rural environmental remediation efforts, actively implement the "three renovations and one cleanup" project mainly consisting of renovating kitchens, toilets, and houses and tidying courtyards, and create a clean, sanitary, comfortable, and neat living environment.