Guizhou comprehensively promotes high-quality development of tourism industry

Wanfeng Forest in Xingyi City, Guizhou Province.

Photo by Zhang Ting

As night fell, each person raised a torch, and a team of over 3000 people meandered up, illuminating the 24 winding mountain roads in a dazzling way... In August of this year, Qinglong County, Qianxinan Buyi and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Guizhou Province, held a Torch Festival event, which not only brought joy to the local people but also attracted many tourists from other places to check in.

"It's beautiful, fun, delicious, and refreshing, making people reluctant to leave!" said Li Xiaokun, a tourist from Shandong. Music festivals, food festivals, bonfire parties, ethnic traditional sports events, and other events take turns, and the family has a lot of fun, unconsciously staying in this small southwestern city for many days.

From "coming" to "staying", Li Xiaokun's Qinglong journey reflects the continuous upgrading of Guizhou's tourism industry. Following the explosive growth of summer tourists in previous years, Guizhou has set a new goal of becoming a world-class tourist destination, focusing on the three major elements of resources, customer sources, and services, making good use of natural and cultural treasures, and comprehensively promoting the high-quality development of the tourism industry.

Karst landforms, mountainous climate resources, and colorful ethnic cultures

Utilize distinctive resources and establish a tourism product system

In autumn, the Wanfeng Forest Scenic Area is located in Qianxinan Prefecture, with countless peaks overlapping and golden rice waves spreading at the foot of the mountain. The Nahui River meanders and flows, connecting Buyi villages one after another, creating a charming landscape of mountains, waters, and countryside! At this moment, melodious music is played, and people sit together, picking up instruments such as Niuguhu and Zhutongqin to play, play, and sing, performing the ancient Buyi Eight Tone Sitting Singing, which is intoxicating.

The natural landscape of Wanfenglin Scenic Area is very unique and is known as the "cone-shaped karst large-scale natural museum". "By utilizing unique resources, people can experience different tourism pleasures," said Wei Zhen. As the development leader of scenic tourism projects, Wei Zhen and her colleagues strive to fully showcase the charm of Wanfeng Forest.

Next to Wanfeng Forest, after the renovation and upgrading of the "Homesickness Market", a dedicated exhibition and performance venue for the Eight Tone Sitting Singing has been created, gathering intangible cultural heritage workshops such as grass weaving and wax dyeing. Homestays, snack stalls, and specialty restaurants have been set up along the street, providing tourists with a service that integrates eating, watching, entertainment, and shopping. The scenic area relies on elements such as mountains, rivers, villages, and folk customs to build 20 cultural and tourism clusters. From January to August this year, various scenic spots and venues under the Wanfenglin Tourism Group in Xingyi City, Qiannan Prefecture received over 1.6 million visitors.

The forest coverage rate exceeds 62%, and 92.5% of the land area is mountainous and hilly, with many mountains, rivers, waterfalls, caves, and lakes. Guizhou's natural scenery is diverse. At the same time, the colorful ethnic culture has achieved the reputation of Guizhou's "Cultural Thousand Islands" and "Ethnic Culture Ecological Museum". The consensus for the development of tourism industry in various regions of Guizhou is to utilize distinctive resources, enrich tourism products, and embark on the development path of Wanfeng Forest Scenic Area.

With superior mountain climate resources, Liupanshui City has launched characteristic projects such as "Spring Flower Appreciation, Summer Vacation, Autumn Rural Tour, and Winter Skiing", cultivating 1 national level tourist resort, 8 provincial-level tourist resorts, and 13 national 4A level scenic spots. Wujiangzhai in Bozhou District, Zunyi City brings together 8 different ethnic cuisines and performances, combined with intangible cultural heritage to create new scene style experiences such as learning to make floral paper, appreciating bamboo drifts, and tasting the "Eight Directions Banquet". The tourism performance has grown rapidly.

Adhering to the positioning of "Mountain Park Province · Colorful Guizhou Style", Guizhou has launched 5 world heritage sites, 18 national scenic spots, 28 national forest parks, and 757 traditional Chinese villages, and has initially established a fully functional and diverse tourism product system. "The development of unique natural landscapes and ethnic cultural combinations effectively avoids the homogenization of landscapes." According to the relevant person in charge of the Guizhou Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism, there are currently 82895 registered tourism resource units in the province, including more than 7000 excellent level tourism resources.

"Sports events+tourism economy", "research tourism", "bridge tourism integration"

Enriching tourism formats to meet the diverse needs of tourists

This summer, the rural football league, known as the "Village Super League" by netizens, made Rongjiang County, which is deeply hidden in the hinterland of Leigong Mountain, popular and "out of the circle". 20 amateur teams based in villages, with an average online live audience of over 50 million for each game played, attracted over 50000 tourists and fans to Rongjiang County.

How to make customers stay and consume in the face of the high traffic brought by "village supermarkets"? Rongjiang County, which has been lifted out of poverty for less than three years, has presented a brilliant answer sheet - utilizing the vacant land around the venues to plan more than 2000 free booths, and promoting the "street vendor economy" with great success; Organize folk exhibitions such as Lusheng to bring authentic traditional skills and cultural and creative products closer to the audience; Explore the elements of "sports+" and attract sports events through tourist attractions, specialty cuisine, and boutique homestays

"The hotel industry in the county has ushered in new opportunities for development and is also facing challenges in improving services. Since February this year, we have granted credit to more than 20 hotel merchants in the county, with a credit amount of more than 20 million yuan, to help complete the upgrading and renovation." said Liu Zhenghua, President of Rongjiang Branch of Guizhou Bank.

According to Xu Bo, the county mayor of Rongjiang County, the local government is promoting tourism and production through competitions, striving to develop more "village supermarkets" that are "super delicious," "super enjoyable," and "super fun.". During the two and a half months of the competition, a total of 3.3842 million tourists were attracted, achieving a comprehensive tourism revenue of 3.834 billion yuan.

"Sports events+tourism economy", Rongjiang County has found a "way" for rural revitalization from the "joy" of rural sports. Looking at the entire province of Guizhou, various regions are actively exploring integration, cross-border, and expansion, guiding tourists to shift from "fleeting observation" to "deep experience", making tourism "attractive and enjoyable", and transforming short-term attraction into long-term "return rate".

The Tiankeng is deep and karst caves are everywhere, located in the Twelve Back Tourist Area of Suiyang County, forming an ecological combination of caves, forests, mountains, and water. To meet the diverse needs of tourists, the scenic area has launched more than 10 sports tourism projects, including cave exploration, flying, and rock climbing. It has innovatively developed new cultural and tourism formats such as "cave+sports", "cave+poetry", and "cave+intangible cultural heritage", and has successfully been rated as a national level sports tourism demonstration base. "Study tours have become our signature brand, with customers covering first tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. Guesthouses are often hard to find," said Jiang Wei, General Manager of the New Business Unit of the Twelve Back Tourist Area.

Some seemingly ordinary places, once given new gameplay, quickly become new highlights that attract tourists. There are over 28000 highway bridges in Guizhou, known as the "Bridge Museum". The projects such as high-altitude bungee jumping, rapid descent, and aerial restaurants that have emerged have opened up new attempts at bridge tourism integration; Embedding night snacks, night scenery, night performances, night shopping and other formats, an old market in Guiyang city has transformed into a trendy new landmark, Qingyun Market, with a rapid increase in daily passenger flow to 40000 people.

From January to July this year, Guizhou received a total of 385 million tourists, achieving a tourism revenue of 434.679 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15.8% and 26.6% respectively. The per capita consumption of tourists was 1127.76 yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.4%.

"Two exemptions and two halvings" discounts, promoting the rectification of the tourism market

Improving tourism services and polishing the golden signboard of "Colorful Guizhou"

In early June, Guizhou launched the "two exemptions and two halvings" promotion, which implemented policies such as free admission to scenic spots for students, the elderly, children and other groups across the country, and half price discounts for other groups. At the same time, a half price discount on toll fees will be implemented for vehicles entering Guizhou from other provinces at specific times. This is not the first time Guizhou has introduced tourism preferential policies. In recent years, Guizhou has continuously introduced preferential measures for the admission and transportation costs of key scenic spots.

Implementing the reduction period during the peak season and distributing cultural and tourism consumption vouchers with real gold and silver, Guizhou has demonstrated its determination and dedication to developing the tourism industry through practical measures: rather than earning less ticket money, it is necessary to make tourists feel full of sincerity, actively enter Guizhou, and gradually fall in love with Guizhou.

To provide excellent tourism services, all industries should actively take action and jointly polish the golden signboard of "Colorful Guizhou". At the end of August, the high-speed railway from Guiyang to Nanning was fully opened, and the pedestrian flow in the Libo Xiaoqikong Scenic Area surged. The scenic area will implement a "one ticket, 7-day use system" to allow tourists sufficient time to enjoy themselves. To ensure green travel for self driving tourists, Southern Power Grid has built 34000 charging infrastructure in Guizhou, with a charging service capacity of 1.18 million kilowatts. It has also built a three-level charging network centered around the city, connecting 88 counties and districts, and driving 985 townships. The charging stations in national 4A level and above tourist attractions in the province have basically achieved full coverage, and the backbone charging network structure in the province has been basically formed. With the support of financial institutions such as Guizhou Bank and the Guizhou Provincial Branch of China Development Bank, the standardization and standardization level of hardware facilities in various scenic spots continues to improve.

To create a safe, comfortable, and reassuring tourism environment for tourists, Guizhou has deeply promoted the three-year action plan and the "Qianfeng Action" to rectify the tourism market. 41000 law enforcement personnel have been dispatched, 16000 inspections have been conducted, and 37 cases have been filed. Starting from 2017, we have been continuously carrying out the "Pain Visitor Tour" campaign to encourage tourists and the general public to complain and report on the "pain points" discovered and encountered during tourism. We will provide a cash reward of 200 to 5000 yuan for constructive opinions and suggestions.

In April this year, a tourist reported to the Guiyang Public Service Hotline that they were repeatedly induced to shop by tour guides and were threatened by them. After verifying the audio evidence submitted by tourists, law enforcement officers quickly took action, fined the tour guide involved 20000 yuan, and imposed an administrative penalty of one month of suspension and rectification on the affiliated travel agency. "I didn't expect it to be so fast and processed so vigorously!" The tourist sighed.

At present, the tourism industry in Guizhou is in a period of advantage transformation and improvement. We will continue to implement actions such as upgrading business formats, improving service quality, and revitalizing existing projects in the tourism field. We will accelerate the construction of world-class tourism destinations, promote the construction of a colorful Guizhou tourism province, and build the tourism industry into an empowering, prosperous, and happy industry.