Tourists visit the Imperial Summer Resort in Chengde, north China's Hebei Province, May 2, 2024. (Photo by Liu Huanyu/Xinhua)

China's tourism sector has witnessed a notable boom, greatly facilitating the country's social and economic development. 

At a national meeting on the development of the tourism sector held on Friday, efforts were demanded to promote the high-quality development of the sector and accelerate the building of China into a country strong in tourism. 

The meeting also highlighted the importance of protecting cultural heritage and ecological resources, enhancing the level of supply and quality of services, and deepening international tourism exchanges and cooperation. 

During the five-day May Day holiday this year, domestic tourist expenditure in China amounted to 166.89 billion yuan (about 23.5 billion U.S. dollars), up 12.7 percent from the same period in 2023. 

The holiday season travel rush evident at popular travel destinations recently has underlined tourism's strong driving role in China's process of economic and social development. 

For instance, the city of Harbin in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, which is renowned for its winter scenery, received 10 million visits during the 2024 Spring Festival holiday. The visits generated total tourist income of 16.4 billion yuan, 235.4 percent higher than the same period last year. 

The fact that tourism is becoming an emerging strategic pillar industry is also evident in China's rural areas, where it is playing a major role in the country's rural revitalization drive. 

Xiantan Village, once a little-known location hidden in the mountains of Deqing County, Zhejiang Province, is one of the villages that was totally transformed through the development of tourism. 

Far from being the secluded village it once was, this village is now a popular tourist destination with a robust homestay industry, said Shen Jiangrong, secretary of the village's Communist Party of China committee and also a local homestay owner. 

The village currently features 166 homestays and many restaurants and cafes, which have created more than a hundred jobs for villagers and facilitated the development of tourism-related businesses in surrounding areas. 

During the 2024 May Day holiday, Deqing County received over 1.38 million tourist visits, which generated almost 1.9 billion yuan in tourism revenue. 

Several regions in China are continuing to explore ways to further unleash their tourism potential, seeking to integrate local culture into travel products, so as to provide travelers with unique experiences. 

"While protecting and inheriting history and culture, we should strengthen cultural characteristics, innovate ways of presentation, integrate them into products and services, develop more scenarios for travelers to experience them, further unleash their charm, and form a brand image more recognized by consumers," said Wang Zhifa, a former tourism official.