I first visited Sanya in 2003 and was immediately taken with its great potential as a vacation destination. I have invested considerable time , effort and resources ever since to help it be what it could be.
In response for my opinion on how it was doing I wrote the following article 4 years ago. It bemoans the sorry state of visitor services and tourism planning which remains largely unchanged today.
IS SANYA READY TO BE AN INTERNATIONAL DESTINATION?
by David B. Sutton, Ph.D., F.R.G.S.
Sanya is fast becoming a world-class vacation destination. Luxury apartments and five-star resorts are cropping up everywhere. There is a tidal wave about to engulf the shores of China’s Hawaii. A tidal wave of International Tourism. Recently there has been a lot of media attention given to Sanya as China’s first special international tourism zone (see report, sanya-lifestyle.com).
But is it ready?
In the past five years the government in Sanya alone has invested more than 15 billion RMB in building tourism-related infrastructure including roads, a modern sewage system, international passenger dock, sightseeing areas, hotels and resorts. But much more needs to be done for this to become a world-class destination. It is not now equipped with the capacity to deliver a quality vacation experience meeting international standards.
Many years ago I founded the Antaeus Center for International Tourism to provide planning, design and training help to developing world-wide tourism destinations. We worked in East Africa, Mexico, Central America, particularly Costa Rica, Peru and India. We were even part of the initial “opening up” in China in 1984. Through all of this it became extremely clear that, cultural differences aside, the developmental process follows a similar path. What is happening now in China, especially Sanya, I have seen all before.
There is an over-emphasis on building large structures and very little attention given to the necessary supporting services that are needed to maintain them. Even in Shanghai, a world-class city by any physical standard, there are very few examples reaching a global standard. Once things are built, the majority of resources are then expended on promoting the venue—getting people there, and virtually no thought or resources expended on providing quality services for people once they are there.
(Note: this has rapidly changed since this piece was written).
In Sanya, it is even worse. It hasn’t even begun to think through the supportive ‘software’ it will need when all that they are building is fully operational. Its level of consumer services is primitive.
Building five-star accommodations does not, in itself, provide a five-star vacation experience. It will take quality services, attending to essential detail, not just image.
Allow me to give a vivid example. Consider a first time visitor’s arrival at Sanya’s International Airport. There is a saying, “You only have one chance to make a first impression.” – and, in this case, Sanya does not do it well.
What is the visitor likely to encounter? How are they to get to their ultimate accommodation? More likely than not, they will proceed to the airport’s ‘official’ taxi stand and take a taxi. If these travelers have just come from Shanghai, Beijing or any other civilized city, they might expect to get in the taxi, have the driver put on the meter, which will click off a standard fare as it proceeds to your destination.
But not in Sanya. THERE IS NO TAXI REGULATION IN SANYA. You have just stepped into the throes of a sort of frontier capitalism. Every body is out for what they can get and they know that, generally, they can get more from foreign visitors. Taxi fares are particularly frustrating — There is NO standard. Even if they are running their meters, which most don’t, the same trip can vary considerably. Most of the time you are left to negotiate for yourself. You have to tell them or show them where you want to go and negotiate a price before you go. How is the first time visitor to do that? How are they to know what is fair? If you are not equipped with this information you are likely to pay 2 to 3 times what it should be. What kind of impression is this giving a new guest? How likely are they to return or suggest to others that they come to be subjected to similar treatment?
This is not acceptable, this is not service befitting a world class tourist destination. It does not remotely approach a global standard. It is not a good sign that an airport that portends to be a major international destination with “freedom of the skies” status can not even assure the traveler fair treatment by the taxis it furnishes. There needs to be regulation of the taxi system, with standard rates established and fines and lost licenses for violators.
A first line of remedy, while waiting for the inevitable regulation, is to disseminate the needed information. So for this interim we have furnished some guidelines for your negotiations (see “Travelers Tips”).
But, the fact is, even in this most rudimentary first step, Sanya is sorely lacking. There is no readily available information in Sanya (in English or any other language). This is a very serious problem and an essential first step upon which many of the necessary future visitor services need to be built.
What is immediately needed is a ready multi-lingual information source for visitors. A way for them to get their bearings, identify and locate the amenities available and fully partake of the Sanya’s bounty. Beyond that, the long-term foreign visitor needs help in negotiating the swamp of ‘culture traps’ and miscommunication obstacles ever present in a newly developing cross-cultural setting.
Last year Sanya received almost four million travelers, over ten percent of those were foreign English-speaking visitors who were left to their own hit-or-miss devices of information gathering. Not only is this an extremely inefficient process, it leaves them vulnerable to innocent miscommunication problems, a number of deceitful practices and many very disappointing experiences.
The lack of readily available reliable information in Sanya is a very serious problem. There is no place for the visitor or resident to go to find out where to go and what to do. While many of the five-star venues throughout the city have some regular activities (such as Happy Hours, Barbeques, and special events and entertainment) there is no way to know about them. Even the elegant resorts in Yalong Bay do not have an in-house information vehicle for their own guests to know of the Hotels activities. A visitor staying in Sanya city or Dadonghai also has no way of knowing. This deficiency does not support an international tourist destination.
This has been my motivation for developing the Sanya City Guide (CityWeekend, 2006) and hopes for creating Sanya’s first multi-lingual (English/Chinese/Russian) information source Magazine. But all kinds of services, everywhere are needed and people need to be trained to provide them.
Sanya deserves to be an international destination second to none. But it has a lot of work to do to get there. I love my new adopted home and I want to see it develop and prosper. My colleagues and I have the experience and expertise in tourism infrastructure planning, sustainable (ecological) design, corporate and staff training to contribute. We are ready to assist Sanya’s government and private enterprises in bringing their offerings up to international design and service standards. We can begin at any stage of the process from initial site planning and facility design to up-grading skills training for on-going operation (such as cross-culture and language training) and providing world-class entertainment. We are poised to supply what is missing to make Sanya the international destination it deserves to be. Why don’t you join us?
Editor’s Note: David Sutton knows what he is talking about, having taught international development and sustainable tourism at the University for over twenty years. While at Stanford University, he created the Antaeus Center for International Tourism and was a founding member of the International Ecotourism Society. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society. He started, “Friends of Sanya” to generate grass-root support for the things Sanya needs to do to become the international tourism destination it deserves to be.
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After years of preaching the need for information resources, I finally interested CityWeekend, a publisher that produces a number of weekly magazines for the major cities of China, in publishing the first English language guide to Sanya. It was a terribly frustrating experience which I have reported on in several previous Dispatches (see Dispatches 4 (8), 5 (1), 5 (2)) But it did create the first (and I might add still the only).