上海 Brand Shanghai – new slogan, new logo revealed

The tourism promotional slogan and logo of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo were unveiled during a global announcement ceremony at the Shanghai World Financial Center this week. “Brand Shanghai” will get a fresh look and feel mixing traditional and modern Chinese elements. This is the first time China launches tourism promotion activities with a “city theme” on a nationwide scale. See how Shanghai aims to position itself for the Expo and beyond….

Shao Qiwei, director of China National Tourism Administration; Zhao Wen, vice mayor of Shanghai; and Zhong Yanqun, fulltime deputy director of the Shanghai 2010 World Exposition Executive Committee, attended the event and jointly launched the slogans, emblems and images for World Expo.

The slogan is ‘Shanghai China More Discovery More Experience.’ The logo is comprised of a traditional Chinese ’sea wave’ pattern in a blue color, the Chinese characters ‘Shang’ and ‘Hai’ in the cursive style of calligraphy, the Arabic numerals ‘2010′ for the year when the World Expo will be held and the English word ‘Shanghai’ for the city where the World Expo will take place.

The logo uses tides, a Chinese traditional painting element, as the background, and Chinese characters “Shanghai” in cursive writing style as the main body. The Shanghai 2010 is put below.

The slogan encourages tourists from home and abroad to “discover and experience” Shanghai and the entire Yangtze River Delta region, the Shanghai Tourism Administrative Commission said. The logo expresses the city’s spirit in “accepting different cultures, just like the sea containing all rivers,” the commission said. The orange “2010″ expresses the city’s passion and joy, it added.

Dao Shuming, director of the Shanghai Municipal Tourism Bureau, said that the tourism promotion slogans, emblems, and images for the World Expo will invoke a unique imagination space to integrate the tour products and itineraries for world expo, this will help focus on major international inbound tourist source markets, such as Japan, South Korea, America, Europe, and Oceania, and will launch the itineraries of Shanghai World Expo zone; downtown, suburban, and neighboring cities; and trans-provincial destinations.

Shanghai aims to turn the tourism promotion slogans, emblems, and images for World Expo into a unique intangible legacy of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo and into symbols of Shanghai as a city pursuing sustainable tourism development.

The commission said it will develop more Expo-related tour packages and products in cooperation with tour service companies to build the Shanghai World Expo tourism brand. More than 70 million tourists from home and abroad are expected to visit the city during the event, which will run from May to October in 2010.

Meanwhile several Shanghai travel agencies launched 30 itineraries for World Expo.

To take advantage of business opportunities of the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, 54 international and over 800 domestic travel agencies have launched 30 itineraries for World Expo.

These 30 itineraries include tour products with themes of sightseeing in Shanghai; new Jiangnan tours combined with the tourism resources of ancient water towns in Jiangnan; boutique itineraries to east China; and specific tour products including charter flights, cruises, and excursion trains for World Expo.

At present, Shanghai has ten categories of tour product: festival tours, cruise tours, ancient town tours, folk-custom tours, sports cultural tours, shopping tours, historic architecture sightseeing tours, study tours, rural tours, and urban sightseeing tours. The tour brand for World Expo is focusing on diversity and specific themes by integrating current tourism resources.

To regulate the travel service market the Shanghai Municipal Tourism Administrative Commission has established a website for trade management and a grading system for the Shanghai tourism sector, consisting of three information platforms for travel agencies, star-grade hotels, and inns, with four major functions of trade management, public supervision, social service, and data statistics. The Shanghai Tourism Trade Association will offer basic information on over 800 travel agencies and more than 300 star-grade hotels as well as 4,400 inns around Shanghai for the website.