Road show promotes Shandong's culture, tourism industry

The Shandong provincial publicity department and the Shandong provincial department of culture and tourism jointly held a road show on the province's cultural creativity and boutique tourism industry on Oct 19 during the Qingdao Multinationals Summit.

More than 150 guests attended the event, including industry leaders, government officials, well-known scholars, and representatives from domestic and foreign top 500 enterprises and financial institutions.

Roadshows were held for six projects, including a 3D movie project based in Qingdao, a design valley in Weihai, and the Mount Tai press and publication town, which involve a combined total of 33.69 billion yuan ($4.76 billion) in investment and 8.28 billion yuan in financing.

The Weihai design valley project is a key cultural and creative project of Shandong province, blending architectural art with design resources, local officials said.

Located in Weihai's Wendeng district, the project, covering an area of more than 5,000 mu (333.33 hectares), is expected to attract 80 to 100 leading domestic designers, which will be provided with independent property rights for architectural space. It will also utilize educational and scientific research resources from eight first-tier domestic architectural colleges and universities to provide academic support for design enterprises operating in the valley.

Officials said that the project will be developed into a platform for exporting talents and high-quality design works.

According to Zhang Mingchi, vice director of the Shandong Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism, the event was designed to promote the province's cultural creativity, high-quality tourism industry, and investment environment in a bid to open up new channels for industrial connection and project cooperation with multinational companies.

Wang Shaojie, deputy group leader of Shandong's cultural and creative industry, said that in the past two years, Shandong has released development plans for cultural and creative industries and high-quality tourism, and will soon launch plans for the integrated development of the culture and tourism sectors in bid to promote the creative transformation and innovative development of traditional culture.

By 2022, the added value of cultural and creative industries in the province is expected to reach over 600 billion yuan, accounting for about 6 percent of its total GDP.

The province hopes that it will earn 1.5 trillion yuan in tourism consumption by 2020, with the added value of the tourism and leisure industry reaching 800 billion yuan, accounting for 8 percent of its total GDP.