On the afternoon of April 7, the core activity of the 2025 Silk Road (Gansu) International Travel Mart - "High-end Dialogue" was held in Lanzhou. Sixteen participating guests from six countries and regions including the United States, Germany, Singapore, Japan, Malaysia and Macao participated in the topic discussion. The event focused on three major themes: "New Routes, New Products and New Marketing of the Silk Road", "The Innovative Development Strategy of E-commerce for China's Inbound Tourism" and "The Innovative Social Media Marketing of China's Cultural Tourism Destinations", outlining a new picture of cultural and tourism development. In-depth discussions were carried out around the innovative development of cultural and tourism along the Silk Road, injecting new impetus into international tourism cooperation.

In the topic of “New Routes, New Products and New Marketing of the Silk Road”, the discussing guests mainly introduced their respective main products and market conditions, and shared the main problems in inbound tourism reception as well as the customer acquisition channels and experience models of the main source markets. Mr. Liu Weikang, President of the Malaysian Chinese Tourism Association, proposed that the differentiation of tourism resources between Gansu in China and Malaysia deeply attracts a large number of tourists from Malaysia. The introduction of the visa exemption policy between the two countries and the opening of direct flights have provided greater convenience for market promotion and mutual visits of tourists. In the future, cooperation will be deepened from multiple dimensions such as joint creation of products, joint expansion of the market, joint cultivation of the industry, and joint construction of transportation. The themed tourism route of “Dialogue between the Maritime and Land Silk Roads” will be focused on building, allowing tourists to fully experience the contemporary echo of the dialogue of Silk Road civilizations. Hu Juanjuan, Deputy General Manager of Asia Odyssey, proposed that Gansu should deeply explore the cultural IP of the Silk Road, and create a world-class cultural heritage tourism corridor through the linkage of the route of “Hexi Corridor + Central Asian Cross-border”.

Regarding the "Innovative Development Strategy of E-commerce for China's Inbound Tourism", the guests shared the changes in the customer acquisition channels and customer acquisition costs of e-commerce for China's inbound tourism, the successful cases, problems and challenges of overseas social media marketing, as well as the changes and challenges in the market demand of e-commerce customers for inbound tourism in their respective main source markets. Mr. Zhang Jinqiang, the representative of PhoCusWright in China, shared the construction achievements of the "Global Tourism Consumption Big Data Platform" and proposed solutions such as building a multilingual reservation system and facilitating cross-border payments. Wu Guanlong, the Head of New Customer Business Ecosystem Cooperation in Google's Greater China Region, pointed out that "AI intelligent translation and one-click cross-border payment are the keys to breaking through the barriers of overseas markets." Cao Jiyue, the Director of the B2B platform of Macau Tourism Industry Exchange, called for the establishment of a "Digital Alliance of Silk Road Cultural Tourism" to integrate global OTA resources.

In the discussion session of "Innovative Social Media Marketing of Cultural Tourism Destinations", the guests shared the growth situation and marketing experience of various platforms or destination markets, as well as the overseas marketing creativity of cultural tourism destinations along the Silk Road in Gansu, especially successful cases of new media marketing. Eden Chen, the Director of Tourism Industry Customer for TikTok's Overseas Business, revealed the secrets of attracting traffic through short videos. Takashi Inoue, a well-known Japanese director, proposed to link the cultural and tourism IP of Gansu with the documentary "The Silk Road" to attract global Generation Z tourists and achieve the "breaking of the cultural circle", which has attracted the high attention of international travel agencies.

The attending guests unanimously agreed that it is necessary to establish a full-chain digital marketing system of “content production - platform distribution - overseas community operation”, and transform Gansu’s “Grotto Corridor” and “Hexi Corridor” into globally popular check-in landmarks. This intellectual feast integrating the wisdom of the East and the West has provided innovative ideas for tourism in the construction of the Silk Road Economic Belt, demonstrated Gansu’s open attitude as a cultural and tourism hub of the Belt and Road Initiative, and is promoting the thousand-year-old Silk Road to radiate new vitality in the digital era, opening up new paths for the cooperation of the cultural and tourism industry along the Belt and Road Initiative.