The precipitous Yandang Mountain in Yueqing, a county-level city of Wenzhou. [Photo/Wenzhou municipal bureau of culture broadcasting and tourism]
Wenzhou in East China's Zhejiang province has stepped up efforts to promote the development of cultural tourism and build itself into an international tourist destination, local media reported.
At a meeting in Wenzhou on March 22, the city's authorities said that Wenzhou will accelerate the integration of culture with tourism.
As a pilot city for tourism consumption, Wenzhou has advantages in promoting cultural tourism. A phenomenal dance drama presented at the 2023 Spring Festival Gala has become a catalyst for boosting the tourist market in Wenzhou's Taishun county.
Thanks to the dance drama, Taishun received a total of more than 30,000 tourists during the Spring Festival holiday, almost 8.5 times the number of tourists in the previous year.
By leveraging water culture and its reputation as a home to overseas Chinese, Wenzhou's Wencheng county has built 23 high-end homestays in key towns such as Nantian and Baizhangji. Since 2020, these high-end homestays have received 178,000 tourists and brought in an income of 130 million yuan ($19 million).
As the tourism market continues to heat up, Wenzhou's cultural tourism is taking full advantage to accelerate the in-depth integration of culture and tourism development and become a strong cultural city.
Over the next five years, Wenzhou will take concrete measures to integrate culture with tourism, foster key tourism projects, revitalize tourism consumption and improve tourism facilities and the city's environment.
By 2027, the added value of the city's cultural and tourism industry is expected to account for 13.2 percent of its GDP, while the cumulative investment in cultural and tourism projects is expected to exceed 120 billion yuan ($17.6 billion).
