On May 27, the 2024 Autonomous Region Tourism Development Conference was held, bringing together nearly 500 guests from home and abroad in the "Land of Fire" Turpan to jointly envision the bright prospects for high-quality development of Xinjiang's tourism industry.

The Autonomous Region Tourism Development Conference explicitly proposed to plan and advance the strategy of invigorating Xinjiang through tourism with a higher stance and more concrete measures, fully unleash the potential advantages of tourism, strive to build a distinctive model for high-quality development of the national tourism industry and an important world-class tourism destination, and contribute Xinjiang's strength to accelerating the building of a strong tourism nation.

As of April this year, Xinjiang's 25 civil aviation airports operated a total of 408 routes and handled 13.6159 million passenger trips, a year-on-year increase of 24.23%. Peng Cheng, deputy director of the Civil Aviation Administration of Xinjiang, said that focusing on vigorously advancing travel convenience and forming a pattern of "fast access, slow travel and in-depth experience," Xinjiang civil aviation will, in the future, build on popular tourism destination markets such as Turpan, link the region's 5A-level tourist attractions through routes, further improve the layout of the "cloud bus" regional feeder network, and accelerate the formation of an integrated regional tourism pattern.

In terms of international passenger transport, Xinjiang currently has 21 international routes, covering 14 countries jointly building the Belt and Road, including the five Central Asian countries. This year, the Civil Aviation Administration of Xinjiang will make use of various civil aviation preferential policies to encourage and guide airlines to densify their route networks, and advance the opening of international routes in Kashgar and Yining, accelerating the realization of the goal of "linking the region in a ring, speeding up entry and exit from Xinjiang, smoothing travel between northern and southern Xinjiang, and connecting domestic and international travel."

The convening of this tourism development conference has once again focused the industry's attention on Xinjiang. The conference highlighted openness, innovation and pragmatism, and held the 2024 Xinjiang International Travel Agents Conference, B2B enterprise matchmaking and other events, attracting the attention of large domestic cultural and tourism enterprises and platforms.

Sima Yan, travel operations manager of Xiaohongshu Technology Co., Ltd., said: "Xinjiang has its own traffic, attracting internet bloggers to travel, create content and livestream in Xinjiang, and also attracting us to cooperate." During the conference, the Autonomous Region Department of Culture and Tourism signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Xiaohongshu Technology Co., Ltd. Xiaohongshu will leverage its huge user base and strong daily active user advantages, combine them with Xinjiang's local tourism resources, and carry out in-depth cooperation in the local cultural tourism sector.

Xinjiang will deeply implement the strategy of invigorating Xinjiang through tourism, focus on building *** tourism destinations, and advance Xinjiang's transition from a region rich in tourism resources to a strong region in the tourism economy. In the next three years, the region will concentrate resources and efforts to build 2 to 3 *** tourist attractions, resorts and tourism cities, and build world-renowned tourism routes relying on World Heritage sites, historical and cultural cities, and national 5A-level scenic areas.

"With the goal of building an important domestic tourism destination, we will advance the integrated regional economic development of the cultural tourism and health and wellness industry in Bortala, Wenquan and Sayram Lake scenic areas, fully leverage the resource advantages of ice and snow, health and wellness, distinctive homestays, border areas and hot springs, extend the industrial chain, and strive to build a new highland for cultural tourism and health and wellness," said Meng Hui, deputy secretary of the Party Leadership Group and director of the Bortala Mongol Autonomous Prefecture Culture, Sports, Radio, Television and Tourism Bureau.

At this year's tourism development conference, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism released the "Xinjiang Is a Good Place" Xinjiang tourism consumption special action plan, presenting Xinjiang's tourism industry with a tangible "big gift package." It proposed to closely focus on five aspects—source markets, destinations, product supply, transportation services, and publicity and promotion—and to increase funding input and resource倾斜 to Xinjiang, which greatly inspired tourism practitioners across Xinjiang. They said they would seize opportunities, take the initiative, and inject more vitality into the development of Xinjiang's cultural tourism industry.

"We will make good use of policy support, accelerate the development of high-end tourism projects, build a batch of high-end resort hotels such as Courtyard by Marriott and Hilton, and create immersive, highly experiential cultural tourism brands to meet the needs of consumers at different levels," said Yu Shuying, secretary of the Party Leadership Group of the Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture Culture, Sports, Radio, Television and Tourism Bureau.

In terms of enriching product supply, the action plan stated that it is necessary to rely on Xinjiang's unique resource advantages, focus on new hot spots, new business forms and new scenarios, and plan and launch a series of high-quality tourism products such as distinctive themed tours, self-driving tours and customized tours, so that tourists can have a fulfilling and enjoyable time in Xinjiang. "We will continue to do a good job in traveling with 'sports events, performances, film and television, and study tours,' continuously enrich tourism business forms, and promote the upgrading of tourism consumption in the Hotan region," said Zhou Nengwen, secretary of the Party Leadership Group and deputy director of the Hotan Region Culture, Sports, Radio, Television and Tourism Bureau. He said the region will continue to optimize the business environment, introduce and cultivate tourism market entities, continue to strengthen exchanges and cooperation with brother prefectures and cities in northern and southern Xinjiang, and promote the attraction of tourists to Hotan.

At this tourism development conference, experts and scholars from the domestic and international cultural tourism industry gathered together to offer suggestions for the high-quality development of Xinjiang's cultural tourism around accelerating the building of a strong tourism nation and enabling tourism to better serve a better life, promote economic development, build a spiritual homeland, showcase China's image, and enhance mutual learning among civilizations. "In Xinjiang, among these five functions of tourism, showcasing China's image and enhancing mutual learning among civilizations are particularly important. Therefore, the creation of high-level cultural tourism brands in Xinjiang should appropriately lean toward the field of cultural tourism integration and cultural and humanities scenic areas, strive to form a tourism product system in which natural landscape and historical and cultural categories advance side by side, and balance and optimize the types of tourism products in Xinjiang," said Wei Yun, dean of the Tourism Planning and Design Institute of the Beijing Guoyan Think Tank.