Chengdu tourism expects new high

Southwestern China's Chengdu city recently announced its development targets for the tourism industry in 2014, aiming to receive a total of 186 million tourists and generate tourism revenue of 166.3 billion yuan ($ 27.4 billion), up by 25 percent.

The number of inbound tourists will reach 2 million, a 20 percent rise year-on-year.

The famous tourist city will push its tourism industry to a new high by fully implementing four major projects, local officials said.

The projects will focus on reforming and making innovations on tourism policy, optimizing tourism industrial structure, promoting synergy between tourism and other industries and improving tourism services, according to the officials.

In 2013, 155 million tourists visited the city, an increase of 27.7 percent than the previous year. Tourism revenue reached 133 billion yuan.

Accordingly, 90 major tourism projects attracted 13.5 billion yuan investment, 37 percent more than the annual planned investment capital.

Global events also helped to boost the city's tourism industry.

Chengdu is the third city in China to host the 2013 PATA Travel Mart, a top trade fair in the Asia Pacific region, in September.

As a key element of the event, the Fly Chengdu Marketing Alliance was set up to enhance cooperation among Chengdu's direct-fly cities.

In the same month, Chengdu adopt the 72-hour visa-free policy, which allows transit passengers from 45 countries who have valid visas and a flight ticket to a third country to stay up to 72 hours.

The Second Chengdu International Travel Fair in December brought together nearly 200 exhibitors from 37 countries and regions.

The city ranked 11th among the 30 most developed tourism cities on the Chinese mainland in 2013, according to a list recently released by Forbes.

Chengdu also ranked third in terms of tourist satisfaction, according to a report released by China Tourism Academy.