By Wang Hui, China Economic Times & Zhou Jianqi, Research Institute of Enterprises, DRC

Research report No.128, 2017 (Total 5203) 2017-9-30

Abstract: Hainan province has made significant progress in building the island into a famous tourist center in the world, but some issues still remain to be addressed. For instance, the tourist industry is limited in terms of scale, the channels for the agglomeration of factors are not smooth and the development momentum is inadequate. The building of a number of health-wellness-based tourist towns with distinctive features is an important task for the innovative development of Hainan province, which is beneficial for fleshing out and enhancing the tourist items and quality of the island, promoting the development of the new-type urbanization drive and advancing the cultural exchanges with countries along the Belt and Road routes. The government needs to make use of the rich resource endowments and the institutional advantages in Hainan province, and actively build development demonstration areas with distinctive features in terms of health-wellness-based tourism. It needs to promote innovation and development of traditional Chinese medicine through health-wellness-based tourism, promote the inheritance and innovation of the Chinese medicine, boost the brand building of locally specialized traditional Chinese medicine including national minority medicine and forge " innovative portals of Chinese medicine" and "Chinese medicine education communities" so as to promote the upgrading of cultural tourism in Hainan province and build the province into an international health-wellness-based tourist destination.

Key words: health-wellness-based tourism, tourist towns with distinctive features, international tourist island, Hainan province