Research on the development of smart tourism in Jiangxi province under the background of the “Internet +”

• (2)    The second stage is the beginning of 2001 Golden Tourism Project, in which, the state comprehensively promoted the construction of tourist information, the e-government and e-commerce became popularized and penetrated the entire industry. The office automation system, the business management system and the public network system have initially formed the basic framework of the development of information industry.

• (3)    The third stage is the period of smart tourism, in which, ecological, cultural, social and economic comprehensive value maximization can be promoted as to achieve a sustainable development of tourism industry by means of the technologies of internet of things, cloud computing, GIS, VR and mobile internet, with application innovation to satisfy the tourist experience requirements, management innovation to improve the enterprise management ability and service innovation to promote the transformation of government functions.

• 2.    Development and application of smart tourism in Jiangxi

Thus, the smart tourism is a continuation of tourism information and an advanced stage of development of information technology, which is based on a new generation of information technology such as cloud computing, networking, mobile internet and big data technology, paying more attention to people-oriented on the basis of informatization and focusing on the individual needs and the intelligent application experience.

In 2012, China National Tourism Administration proposed to guide and promote the national smart tourism development and the 18 cities, such as Beijing, etc., became the first-batch national smart tourism pilot cities. CNTA put 2014 as a smart tourism year. In September 2015, CNTA issued the Notice on the Implementation of the “Internet + Tourism” Action Plan (Draft) (hereinafter referred to as notice). The notice pointed out that tourism is a comprehensive industry of the national economy and also an important driving force stimulating the economic growth. The notice put forward action requirements to implement the “Tourism + Internet” action plan, which includes the basic ideas and the development goals of action requirements. By 2020, the various fields of the tourism industry will have achieved a comprehensive integration of the Internet which is a main driving force and an important support of the innovation development of China’s tourism industry. The online tourism investments account for 15 percent of the national tourism direct investments while the online tourism consumption expenditures account for 20 percent of the domestic tourism consumption expenditure.

Therefore, the smart tourism can be achieved by means of “Internet +” in tourism consumption, production management, organization management and services. Based on “1+n” model (such as pension, health care, hot spring, parent child, catering, accommodation, shopping, entertainment, etc.), we can integrate various industrial elements by activating the elements of natural ecology, climatic environment, historical culture, industrial production, circulation consumption and innovation to form a compound industrial relation, with the primary industry as the foundation, the secondary industry as the support, the tertiary industry as the highlight, and the three industries developing collaboratively.

In this regard, tourism industry is an industrial lubricant and also a transformer of industrial development, which shapes a new ecology and a new future of industrial integration .

• (1)    General development condition of tourism industry in Jiangxi

  In recent years, the tourism industry in Jiangxi has developed rapidly which shows a good posture of an exciting, leapfrog development (Tab. 1 and 2) . In 2010, the number of tourist reception reached over 100 million people. In 2011, the total tourism earnings got over one trillion. In 2013, the

Тable 1. Development of tourism industry in Jiangxi

Year	Total tourism earnings (100 million yuan)	As percentage of total national tourism earnings (%)	As percentage of the Province’s GDP (%)	As percentage of tertiary industry in the Province’s GDP (%)
2004	240.81	3.52	6.97	19.65
2005	320.02	4.16	7.89	22.67
2006	390.89	4.37	8.37	25.00
2007	463.67	4.23	8.43	26.44
2008	559.38	4.83	8.63	27.90
2009	675.61	5.20	8.83	25.62
2010	818.32	5.21	8.66	26.22
2011	1105.93	4.92	9.45	28.20
2012	1402.59	5.42	10.83	31.27
2013	1896.06	6.43	13.22	37.69
2014	2649.70	8.15	16.86	45.82

Table 2. Condition of tourism by region (2014)

Region Number of oversea visitor arrivals (10000 persontimes) Foreign exchange earnings from international tourism (USD 10000) Number of domestic visitors (10000 persontimes) Earnings from domestic tourism (100 million yuan) Number of star-rated hotel (unit) Provincial Total 171.68 55686.70 31134.47 2615.17 455 Nanchang 20.78 6802.91 4266.02 381.03 55 Jingdezhen 27.76 8831.12 2568.87 206.60 27 Pingxiang 7.91 2563.69 2185.24 154.62 11 Jiujiang 31.35 11209.66 4329.57 385.25 76 Xinyu 2.63 784.63 1056.88 90.72 13 Yingtan 7.48 1867.35 1816.5 138.37 17 Ganzhou 16.33 5068.83 3079.37 269.14 71 Ji’an 20.05 6285.32 3762.02 298.66 47 Yichun 7.89 2607.54 2158.59 175.37 47 Fuzhou 7.16 2518.55 1628.45 132.83 32 Shangrao 22.34 7147.10 4282.96 382.63 59 number of tourist reception reached 250 million people, an increase of 22% over the previous year and the total tourism earnings reached 18.9606 billion yuan, an increase of 36.18%. In 2014, the number of tourist reception reached 313 million people, an increase of 25.18% over the previous year and the total tourism earnings reached 26.497 billion yuan, an increase of 39.75%.

The promotion activities of the brand of Beautiful Jiangxi Scenery have won lots of honors, such as the top ten advertising and marketing classic cases in 2011, Top One of China Brand Marketing Memorabilia, and the Golden Prize of the Great Wall Awards of China Advertisement. The tourism industry becomes an important pillar industry of Jiangxi, which plays an important role in pulling and promoting the economic and social development.

• (2)    Current situation of smart tourism development in Jiangxi

  In February 2012, the website of Jiangxi smart tourism (HTTP://WWW.JXZHLYW. COM/) was introduced, which has opened a brand strategic cooperation between Jiangxi tourism and the Alibaba group. The website of Jiangxi smart tourism is a multifunctional tourism electronic business platform which contains product exhibition, marketing promotion, tourist product booking, online transaction and offline service. The user can experience it by making use of computer, mobile phone, wireless terminal equipment for entry at any time.

• 3.    Challenges of smart tourism development in Jiangxi

The website uses wisdom tour search, treasure bag, and smart card to achieve the four basic functions with intelligent navigation, intelligent tourism guide, intelligent browser and intelligent shopping guide. The website analyzes user behaviors and travel habits to automatically provide a personalized program. At the same time, cooperation agreements have been signed with Sina, Tencent and Sohu for micro-blog promotion. The use of tickets with the twodimensional code facilitates the tourists in Jiangxi.

Since 2014, Jiangxi has tried to provide services in network marketing, online booking and online payment. As the first scenic spot to use “WeChat” for booking tickets or hotel services, Mount Longhu has completed the scenic area development planning of smart tourism. GPS coordinates of key attractions, public toilets, ticketing centers, wharfs, restaurants and shops are collected and then input into the WeChat system. Visitors can simply scan the QR code of Mount Longhu to concern about the public service number for tickets, hotels, toilets and voice guide by using the WeChat to enjoy the intelligent services.

Jingdezhen has launched the mobile phone APP of traveling guide in the local city. The tourists can obtain authoritative, comprehensive, timely and thoughtful travel information services by touching their mobile phones.

Yichun also uses the networks for introducing the attractions with a full range of three-dimensional display which provides for tourists one-stop service.

• (1)    Shortage of unified top-level design

At present, there is neither a clear idea of smart tourism at home and abroad nor a unified definition in domestic research of tourism industry. CNTA only provided the instructional views on construction of smart tourism, in which, the unified standards, conceptions and evaluation system in technology and tourism concerned in the process of smart tourism construction have not been established, causing indistinct goals of smart tourism construction. Independent actions of cities in the construction of smart tourism lead to wasting a large amount of investments. The data can not be shared which is not convenient for visitors.

• (2)    General mechanism of the “smart city” concept at the top level

During making the overall strategies of smart tourism, the formulation of relevant standards and evaluation system requires the simultaneous implementation of the toplevel design and grass-roots construction and the overall planning and all-round considerations (Figure) . While designing the national-level guiding program with the unified platform, unified standards and unified framework, it is necessary to accelerate the enterprise infrastructure construction with standardization, refinement, programming, digitalization and informatization, convert the achievements

The overall framework of top-level design of smart city

Evaluation System of Smart City

Public Service System of Smart Cit

Operation Management System of Smart City

Elements of Foundation System of Smart City

Technology Support System of Smart City

Intelligence of Urban Subject

Legal Safeguard System of Smart City

Intelligence of Urban Social Resources

Human Resources

Intelligence of Urban Infrastructure

Information Resources

Digitalization of Natural Resources of smart tourism construction to enhance public tourism services and management abilities, such as tourism statistics, tourist satisfaction survey and tourist flow forecast. Guided by the national policies, in line with local conditions, local governments should make a customized and personalized development path of tourism industry. Blind fashion-follow and low-end development are not desirable.

• (3)    Paying too much attention to hardware construction while ignoring software construction

At present, local governments pay more attention to hardware construction in the smart tourism, measuring the level of wisdom development by the number of servers, and the capacity of bandwidth, etc. The smart tourism cannot be kidnapped by technology. Although the technology is playing an important role in smart tourism development, the smart tourism is a kind of industry development concept which can not fundamentally solve the problems by a certain technology. Therefore, the smart tourism needs the technology which is fit for tourism and provides a more convenient and high-efficient accessibility, humanized services, and a high-quality visitor experience. The smart tourism can not blindly pursue technological sophistication.

• (4)    Difficulties in sustainable development

The smart tourism development is not a short-term behavior, which needs a longterm planning and a long-term mechanism.

The top-level design of the smart tourism must be combined with the top-level design of smart cities. At present, many cities lack a long-term mechanism of operation and management in the construction of smart tourism, which are unable to stimulate the enthusiasm and creativity of social forces’ participation in the construction of smart tourism. Some places fail to formulate investment subjects and their rights from the perspective of interest subjects in the process of promoting the construction of the smart tourism, making a dislocation between investment subjects and interest subjects. After direct investments by the government, the system needs a lot of money for a longterm maintenance, leading to difficulties in sustainable development.

• (5)    Shortage of smart tourism talents

The construction of smart tourism needs lots of technical talents. As the smart tourism is a new thing, whose attractiveness is relatively low, the talent issues are relatively prominent in the smart tourism construction. Therefore, the smart tourism construction needs a professional team in the fields of tourism, information technology, policies and regulations, e-commerce and network marketing for development and guidance.