On June 13, 2016, the opening ceremony for the UNESCO Training Course on World Heritage and Sustainable Tourism was successfully held at The World Heritage Institute of Training and Research for the Asia and the Pacific Region (WHITRAP), Shanghai. The course brought 33 participants together and most of them are from the World Heritage Sites or the sites on the Tentative List, such as Wulingyuan Scenic, Historic Interest Area and Mogao Caves. The opening ceremony was hosted by Ms. LU Wei, the Executive Deputy Director of WHITRAP Shanghai. Meanwhile, Peter DEBRINE, Programme Specialist for “World Heritage and Sustainable Tourism Programme” at UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Art PEDERSEN, the Consultant Expert in World Heritage tourism, and Prof. ZHOU Jian, Secretary General of WHITRAP attended the ceremony.

In 2012, the World Heritage Committee adopted the World Heritage and Sustainable Tourism Programme (hereafter referred to as ‘WH+ST’) in its 36th session (36 COM 5E).The programme is integrated into the Strategic Action Plan for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention 2012-2022 (WHC-11/18.GA/11) and coordinated by the World Heritage Centre under global scale. At the meantime, WHITRAP takes responsibility for the Pilot Programme in the Asian-Pacific Region.

The training course is an important step for UNESCO to facilitate the capacity building of the Chinese World Heritage Sites. The duration of the course will last 7 days which includes several parts, such as "International Requirement”, "Domestic Interpretation”, "Best Practices (case studies)”, and “Simulation Exercise”. International and national World Heritage Tourism experts was invited and they will make lectures on the topic of “Interpretation of Outstanding Universal Values (OUV)”, "Tourism Impact Management”, "Heritage Economy and Product”, and “Engagement of Stakeholders”. Discussions and interaction activities are arranged in order to inspire the participants about how to interpret OUVs and provide high quality tourism services and products accordingly, how to facilitate the stakeholders to take responsible actions and so on. By implementing the Chinese Pilot Programme, WHITRAP aims to provide a feasible approach to develop World Heritage Tourism in China, and share experiences under global scale.