Tai'an entertains 4 million visitors during National Day holiday

Mount Tai in Tai'an attract a number of domestic and foreign visitors during the National Day holiday. [Photo/We Chat account: Hi Mount Tai]

More than 4 million tourists visited local tourist sites in Tai'an, Shandong province during the eight-day Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holiday, an increase of 11.9 percent year-on-year, according to local media reports.

The city's tourism revenue for the holiday, which lasted from Oct 1 to 8, reached 4.05 billion yuan ($611 million), up 14.8 percent on last year's holiday.

Mount Tai welcomed 303,000 visitors, generating revenues of 25.2 million yuan ($3.8 million). The famous scenic spot introduced a new system allowing tourists to gain quicker entry to the mountain park using their ID cards, which helped to boost visitor numbers.

Other traditional scenic spots renovated their supporting facilities and created new cultural attractions in an effort to attract more tourists, which brought them considerable benefits during the holiday.

Tianyi Lake enjoyed a considerable upsurge in popularity after holding its first "flower light show" and creating stunning displays of seasonal flowers, which amazed domestic and foreign visitors.

Another noticeable trend during the holiday was the increasing popular of rural tourism. More than 10,000 tourists visited Liyu village alone, spending more than 700,000 yuan in total.

Self-catering tourism and road trips to Tai'an also increased this year. The city's civic center provided free parking to drivers and received inquiries from 3,707 visitors over the eight days of the holiday, winning praise from China's National Tourism Administration.

The local government introduced a number of innovations to make Tai'an a more convenient travel destination for visitors, launching online platforms to provide tourists with travel information and organizing special shuttle buses to take visitors to and from the railway station and downtown.