Decisions have been made by a two-day conference in Shanghai March 19 to see to it that tourism is to be developed into a pillar industry and launched at a world advanced level to build Shanghai into a first-class tourism metropolitan city known to the world.

In recent years, Shanghai has placed great stress on developing its tourism as a new growth point of economy and a pillar sector of its service industry. As things stand with tourism advances of the city last year, Shanghai has achieved much success to that end. In 1999, Shanghai played host to over 1,656,800 foreign tourists and 74,980,000 from home to have registered a record income of US$1.365 billion and RMB71.933 billion yuan from tourism. Statistics show that the yearly income of Shanghai's tourism industry has been placed at a total of RMB 83.254 billion yuan or 4.9% of its GDP.

Though Shanghai's tourism lacks behind other world advanced, yet wide vistas are open. Irrespective of the fact new challenges may be met after China's entry into the WTO, Shanghai will be assured of success in developing its tourism to a world top-class level during a not long period of time in the future, the two-day conference pointed out.