China gets a tourism boost
Elegant toilet culture campaign set to see a growth in the market by 2020.
CHINA’S domestic tourism market has been booming in the last decade, with a 10% annual growth on average and spending is expected to reach around US$890bil (RM3.62 trillion) by 2020.
However, the bottleneck in China’s domestic tourism market is now none other than its “inadequate, dirty and chaotic” toilets. As Li Jinzao, head of the China National Tourism Administration, pointed out, a dirty toilet destroys the efforts of all kinds of tourist resort promotions and their negative impact is hard to erase.
That was why the CNTA launched a nationwide three-year “Tourism Toilet Revolution” in January 2015, with the goal of building and reconstructing 57,000 public toilets by the end of 2017.
Actually, Beijing’s 2008 Olympic Games was the beginning of China’s toilet revolution. In an effort to ensure their success, the Chinese government invested billions of yuan in building 4,000 new public toilet facilities to world-class standards.
To showcase their great progress, Beijing hosted the World Toilet Summit in 2004.
There is no doubt the Chinese government has the capability to deliver any ambitious infrastructure commitment quickly. But it is the software that is critical to the success of the toilet revolution. China’s toilets are generally “unevenly scattered, poorly managed and low in quality”.
That could be remedied by following the “ABC” rule – architecture, behaviour and cleaning.
First, public toilets have to be user-friendly to a wide variety of people of both genders, from mothers with babies to kids and the elderly and disabled.
Architects and the facility owners need to be “toilet trained” so that they understand how to design for different types of buildings and people.
However, behaviour is the most critical part for success. It includes environmental conditioning inside the toilet that guides the user’s behaviour as well as the society’s behavioural norms.
Past experience shows that rather than lecturing posters, motivating aspirations of personal elegance often proves most successful. When a toilet respects the users, the chances of reciprocal respect from the user are also higher.
Clean toilets also require the professionalisation of cleaners, facility managers, and owners. Right training, equipment and supplies are critical success factors.
In fact, many public toilets in China have been constructed according to high standards, but due to lower management standards, they quickly become dirty and spoilt.
The ancient Chinese had a culture of recycling excreta into fertilisers, leading to the creation of toilets that facilitated the manual collection of excreta, especially in rural areas even today.
As these designs were not focused on the enjoyment and privacy of the individuals, an elegant toilet culture did not develop in many parts of China.
Now, with some 30 years of rapid economic growth, Chinese people enjoy quality lifestyles in various aspects.
Yet, an elegant toilet culture is still missing. It has caused major anomalies and incurred many complaints both inside and outside China.
Promoting a better toilet culture will not only boost more in-bound tourists; it will also be welcome by the host countries receiving outbound Chinese tourists.