Summit upbeat on industry's role in poverty relief

Tourism has both provided pleasure and helped to reduce poverty, according to officials and entrepreneurs at a summit forum of the First World Conference on Tourism for Development in Beijing on Thursday.

Arief Yahya, Indonesia's minister of tourism, said: "Tourism consists of at least three aspects - the cultural, the economic and environmental aspects." He said that in the past, Indonesia focused only on the cultural aspect of tourism, whereas now tourism is projected to be the country's main source of foreign income by 2020.

The officials and entrepreneurs at the forum called for cooperation between different agencies and sectors, including governments, the private sector and academia, to develop tourism with the aim of reducing poverty.