Shanghai Municipal Tourism Administration Releases a Tips Video of Shanghai Tax Refund

2018-10-15

Shanghai is China's window to the outside world. In 2017, Shanghai received 8.73 million inbound tourists. In the first half of 2018, the number of inbound tourists continued increasing by 1.71 % year on year. According to the Global Destination Cities Index 2017 by MasterCard Inc., Shanghai is the only Chinese mainland city in the Global Top 20 Destination Cities by International Overnight Visitors. According to the development plan, Shanghai will receive 10 million inbound tourists in 2020 and 14 million in 2035. Shanghai will become a high-quality world-famous tourist city.

The development of inbound tourism is closely related to relevant policies introduced in recent years. For example, there are two policies for individual travelers. The 144-hour visa-free transit policy has attracted many travelers to use the six-day visa-free time allowed to arrange sightseeing tours. It greatly saves the travel cost and improves the efficiency of the traveler. Besides, the Shanghai Tax Refund policy also makes Shanghai more and more attractive to international tourists.

By July 1, Shanghai had implemented the departure tax refund policy for three years. In such three years, Shanghai saw 49,000 departure tax refund applications approved, and 70 million Yuan was successfully refunded for more than 48,000 foreign tourists. The total value of sales of goods that received the departure tax refund added up to 650 million Yuan. The amount of departure tax refund and sales both accounted for over 75% of the national total.

Shanghai Municipal Tourism Administration will continue regarding its role as serving tourists to Shanghai, strengthen close cooperation with relevant departments, including the Municipal Commission of Commerce, and act as an announcer for the city’s tourism resources, a propagandist for the inbound tourism policies and the servant for inbound tourists. During the inbound tourism policy publicity week, the closed-circuit television systems in all large star hotels of Shanghai will play the “Tips Video of Shanghai Tax Refund” again and again. In the meantime, as the publicity and promotion of city image both online and offline proceeding, Shanghai Municipal Tourism Administration will also build a “Shanghai Travel E-coupon ”platform and join hand with relevant departments to introduce preferential measures covering “sightseeing, shopping, recreation, food, accommodation, travel” for overseas tourists during their stay in Shanghai, to make the policies practically implemented in enterprises.

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