Tourist police from China’s southernmost city of Sanya patrols together with their Russian counterparts on the streets of Moscow in Russia, Aug. 10, 2016. [Photo: Xinhua/Dai Tianfang]

Booming tourism industries around the world have given birth to a new profession – the tourist police.

They patrol in tourist destinations, maintain public order, watch out for thieves, and sometimes assist lost tourists in finding their way.

These special police officers are feeling the need to seek international cooperation as more and more tourists travel across borders.

an example of such cooperation involves tourist police from China and Russia involved in a joint action this week.

Our reporter Ding Heng has more.

A delegation of tourist police from China's southernmost city of Sanya, a popular beach resort, patrolled together with their Russian counterparts on the streets of Moscow on Wednesday.

This is part of the agenda for their visit to the Russian capital this week, to exchange experience and best practices with local tourist police.

The head of the delegation Chen Xiaokun, a top official from Sanya's police bureau, suggests this is by no means an exchange for the sake of exchange.

"Huge number of Chinese tourists are traveling to Russia, and many Russian tourists are coming to China as well. How to provide these tourists with better service while at the time, to safeguard their legal interests. This is an issue, or challenges, facing both sides of us."

Data compiled by Russian authorities show the number of Chinese tourists to the country increased 50 percent year on year through this year's first half, and the momentum is likely to continue in the second half.

The 170-member tourist police unit in Moscow was established in 2014.

English or other foreign language skills as well as some knowledge on tourism are the requirements for each member in the unit, in additional to capabilities as police officers.

Anna, a girl who has learned some basic Chinese language skill, is one of them.

She has been a tourist police officer for nearly two years, a veteran among her colleagues in the unit.

She says it is still pretty normal for her to encounter some difficult situations in her daily work when it comes to serving Chinese tourists.

"Usually, tourists come to me in order to ask how to get to their destinations. Sometimes it's about asking for my suggestion on which place is more interesting, or which restaurant is better. There were times when Chinese tourists were lost, and I offered some help. But the difficult thing is, for example, some tourists from southern China speaks very fast. I can hardly catch what they say. "

By comparison, the Chinese tourist police officers are less experienced.

The delegation from Sanya is by far the only professional tourist police unit in China, set up less than a year ago.

Chen Xiaokun says their pioneering status in China means they have to somehow learn from more experienced overseas counterparts.

"Domestically, we have no predecessors, but police in other places will follow us. So we need to explore on ways, as well as mindsets, to improve our services. So for these purposes, we've come to Russia to learn from them."

Perhaps there is another reason why they decided to learn from Russia.

The Russian tourists have been a big source of foreign visitors to Sanya.

However, the size of this tourist group has been shrinking since 2012, hitting an all-time low last year.

When local tourist police officers use the practice learned from their Russian counterparts to serve their Russian guests, this could become one reason for more Russian to fall in love with the destination.

Author： 　　　Source：CRI　　　 Editor：Yang Fan