With school's summer vacation approaching, high admission fees for scenic spots has again become a hot topic. Despite state and local authority's measures to further lower admission fees, expensive tickets remain a big issue. In some cases, the actual cost of the ticket is higher despite a claimed discount.

High admission fees reflect poor preparation for an upgraded model of scenic spot management in many places.

In the short run, reducing admission fees might strain scenic spots' finances and even put them into a temporary financial crisis. However, if they stick to high fee charges, ill-effects will be stacked up in the long run, and by then, the whole tourism sector is going to be hard to recover.

In recent years, a growing number of people believe that scenic spot tourism management should be linked to the whole neighborhood encompassing the spot. This will effectively rid scenic spots of their reliance on high admission fees.

This model will plot scenic spots as part of the overall tourism map. So, although a spot is still an attraction, it is closely connected to other adjacent tourism resources. And tickets will no longer be the only source of revenue. Just as in the West Lake in Hangzhou of east China's Zhejiang Province, the dismantling of the walls surrounding the scenic spot makes every cultural spot a part of the cultural and tourism network. This will add to the glamor of the city, and thus boost the comprehensive development of the area for a long time to come.

Scenic spots throughout the country should find a suitable model for themselves to make their cities as a whole an attraction, abandoning the old way of overdependence on ticket sales.

(This is an edited excerpt of an article originally published in Oriental Outlook on June 13)