Dalian, Liaoning Province, Tourism Quality Improved Over the Last Three Years, Coastal City’s Romance Enhanced

Dec. 22 - Reporters learned from Dalian Municipal Tourism Development Committee that the committee has further enhanced the tourism brand image of “Dalian, A Romantic City”, by working with the requirements of Dalian Tourism Image Improvement Work Plan (2015-2017), closely focusing on the city tourism brand and coastal tourism city target of “A Romantic City”, constantly innovating marketing models and methods, enriching refined tourist routes, consolidating the traditional market, further exploring essential areas’ markets, and actively expanding potential markets. Working in this manner guarantees the constant growth of tourists visiting Dalian, and has pushed forward the transformation and upgrading of Dalian’s tourism industry and the construction of Northeastern Asia’s tourism resorts.

Over the last three years, Dalian Municipal Tourism Development Committee has been working hard on seven aspects to enhance the good reputation of Dalian’s tourism brand. Strengthen overseas tourism promotion to further improve Dalian tourism’s international influence; consolidate, further cultivate and expand marketing strategies to exponentially increase the Chinese domestic urban area tourism cooperation achievements; upgrade Dalian’s tourism media advertising to constantly enhance the brand reputation of “A Romantic City”; fully utilize the new media of the internet to actively explore the online internet tourism marketing strategies; actively boost the transformation and upgrading of the tourism industry and produce new tourism products, to further improve the attractiveness of Dalian tourism; make use of the special geographic location of Dalian to actively boost the construction of the Northeast Asia Transit Platform; increasingly innovate and enrich the true meaning of festival tourism to further improve the reputation of Dalian tourist destinations.

Since 2015, Dalian Municipal Tourism Development Committee has organized 30 groups to exhibit their tourism resources overseas, and joined the visiting groups organized by the national and provincial tourism bureaus, and Dailan Municipal People’s Congress and Government to promote Dalian tourism. Over the last three years, the tourism image and brand influence of “Dalian, A Romantic City” has further improved, since the committee has been working with the marketing strategy of “Walk out and Invite in”. This strategy targets important overseas tourist source markets, and markets and promotes the city tourism by carrying out reasonable plans and setting up meaningful targets. Under the complicated and severe international situation, Dalian’s total overseas tourist number retains steady growth. Since 2014, the overseas tourists visiting Dalian have reached 966,000. In 2017, the overseas tourists visiting Dalian reached 1,079,000, with an annual average growth of 3.8%.

During the last three years, Dalian Municipal Tourism Development Committee has launched different tourism promotion activities in more than 70 important tourist source markets in China. This has further consolidated and expanded the markets in Northeastern China with Inner Mongolia, Liaoning Province, Heilongjiang Province, and Jilin Province as the center, deeply cultivated the markets in China’s central and Southwestern regions with Henan Province, Guizhou Province and Sichuan Province as the center, and especially expanded the Yangtze River Delta’s markets with Shanghai, Zhejiang Province and Jiangsu Province as the center.

The city’s tourism publicity and promotion strategy has been specially designed for Dalian tourism, which transfers and upgrades from the leisure and sightseeing style of city sightseeing, festivals and events, coastal leisure, theme parks, and other themes, to the development pattern of cruise and yacht, hot spring and skiing, island travel, medical health care, and so on. The strategy treats new tourism product and route innovation and the significance of tourism product enrichment, as important methods in improving Dalian tourism’s influence and attractiveness. It consolidates the advantages of traditions, and also creates new images. In 2015, Dalian welcomed the first cruise ship, which began its journey from the Port of Dalian. By Dec., 2017, cruise ships have chosen the port as their starting port 59 times, and the port has received ten cruise arrivals. In August, 2017, Dalian became one of the first “China’s Tourism and Leisure Model Cities”. In the same month, China National Tourism Administration officially approved that Dalian set up the “China Cruise Tourism Development Experimental Zone”.

Festival tourism has always been a feature of Dalian tourism. Nearly 40 tourism festival events can be found here, including International Hot Spring Ski Festival, Cherry Blossom Festival, Sophora Japonica Appreciation Festival, Cherry Festival, Dalian International Beer Festival, Fishing Festival, Beach Culture Festival etc. Tourism festivals play an important part in activating tourism markets and city image improvement. The Sophora Japonica Appreciation Festival has been successfully held three times while the size and level of it increases year by year. The participants are many, the event has a wide coverage, and lots of people participate in it. We should actively push forward the transfer of Sophora Japonica Appreciation Festival to international tourism cultural exchange, so as to make the festival more international and culture-rich. Since it was first held, a total of more than 80 VIP groups from nearly 20 nations have participated in the event, and more than 70 activities have been held. Nearly 100,000 tourists from China and other nations have been there.

(Ma Huixin)