China's Hainan promotes in-depth integration of tourism with sports, culture sectors

South China's Hainan Province is striving to build a national sports tourism demonstration zone, which promotes the in-depth integration of tourism with the sports and culture sectors.

Sports, including surfing in Wanning city and diving in Sanya city, are helping upgrade the province's tourism structure, further unlocking the potential of tourism consumption, and constantly injecting new vitality into the construction of the Hainan Free Trade Port and an international tourism and consumption center.

A tourist goes surfing at Riyue Bay in Wanning, south China's Hainan Province, Jan. 13, 2023. (Xinhua/Guo Cheng)

Endowed with unique conditions for reveling in the rush of the sea, Riyue Bay, once a sleepy bay in Wanning, has become a paradise for surfers and a popular tourism destination.

The city aims to build a 10 billion yuan ($1.38 billion) industrial cluster that incorporates sports and tourism sectors, said Su Xiaoming, deputy director of the bureau of tourism, culture, radio, television and sports of Wanning.

In the first quarter of this year, Wanning received 1.22 million tourists, with tourism revenue exceeding 2 billion yuan.

Li Jing, a surfing enthusiast from northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, recently planned a series of activities with the International Surfing Day as the theme with some surfing clubs at the bay, attracting nearly 10,000 surfers from home and abroad.

Over 10 years ago, Wanning organized international surfing competitions, which made Riyue Bay a famous surfing spot, but turned out to be not very effective in boosting the development of tourism.

The local government then cooperated with enterprises to popularize surfing, leading to the establishment of the first surf club at Riyue Bay.

When surfing was introduced in the Olympic Games in 2016, nine surfers who trained at the club joined China's national team, and Riyue Bay became a training base for the national team and some provincial and municipal teams. Since then, the bay has attracted more surfing lovers and tourists from home and abroad.

In recent years, Hainan has rolled out a series of policies to support the development of rural tourism, and formulated relevant standards.

Bohou village, once a place with muddy roads and dilapidated dwellings in the southwestern part of Yalong Bay National Resort in Sanya, has become a tourist destination featuring neat and distinctive B&B hotels.

The village decided to develop the B&B industry in 2017. Tan Zhongxian, a local villager who received higher education and had worked in Guangzhou in south China’s Guangdong Province, returned to Bohou to run the first B&B hotel in the village that year.

The B&B industry has gradually been thriving in Bohou, turning it into an Instagram-worthy tourist destination. The village has 61 B&B hotels with over 1,860 rooms. During holidays and festivals, the occupancy rate approaches 95 percent. The flourishing B&B industry in Bohou has also created jobs for nearby villagers.

Maona village, a Li ethnic village located at the foot of Wuzhishan Mountain in Wuzhishan city, has been promoting rural tourism by leveraging its sound ecology and Li culture. The village received 58,800 tourist visits in 2022, with tourism revenue exceeding 2.94 million yuan, up 245.48 percent year on year.

Meanwhile, Hainan has built multiple high-quality business blocks featuring rich culture, including the Qilou Old Street in Haikou city. A restoration project that aims to preserve the original style of this historical and cultural block and combine traditional culture with a modern-day lifestyle has turned it into a well-known hang-out for tourists.

The cultural block is now home to specialty stores, B&B hotels, coffee shops, restaurants, and cultural and creative stores, and many stores of time-honored brands have opened there, according to Zhao Aihua, an expert responsible for the restoration project.

"I take a stroll at the Qilou Old Street almost every week. I am really glad to see that there are many tourists, including foreigners," said Zhao.

Over the past years, Hainan has accelerated the upgrading of its tourism and cultural blocks. It is advancing a batch of premium cultural and tourism programs and continuously promoting new forms of consumption in sectors like tourism, culture, and sports.

Hainan recorded over 3.2 million visitors during this year's May Day holiday, up 141.5 percent year on year, according to official data.