On December 31, the reporter learned from 2013 Work Summary Conference of Stone Forest Scenic Area Management Bureau that this year the Greater and Lesser Stone Forest totally received the domestic and foreign visitors of 3.6 million person times, with a year-on-year increase of 7%. Stone Forest Scenic Area created new record in terms of the number of visitors received and the tourism work of the year was perfectly concluded.

In the past year, Stone Forest, closely centered on the goal of developing itself into the internationally best tourist resort, took many measures to promote the further development of tourism. In order to attract more tourists to Stone Forest, Stone Forest conducted publicity and marketing activities of diverse forms this year. In September, centered on the series activities of “Loving Stone Forest in Autumn ? Meeting in Sea of Flowers in Naigu – Journey of Romance for Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day Holiday”, Stone Forest had publicity and promotion of its tourism brand on such well-known websites as xinhuanet.com and people.com.cn. In the year, it organized the union scenic areas to participate in 2013 China International (Domestic) Travel Mart as “(Strategic) Union of Selected Tour Lines and Scenic Areas of Yunnan”. The tourism promotion activities held in Korea and Thailand obtained great effect. With the tourism image and brand publicity in traffic main arteries and distribution centers of stream of people including Beijing Capital Airport, Kunming Changshui International Airport, Kunming Railway Station and Kunming-Shilin Expressway, the popularity of Stone Forest Scenic Area was further improved.

This year, Stone Forest actively explored the mode of cooperative marketing by integrating the resources of Stone Forest Karst Geological Museum, realizing reciprocity and co-win of the scenic area, travel agencies and enterprises. The “Stone Forest” Tourism Train on Kunming – Shanghai Line launched cooperatively by Stone Forest and Kunming Railway Media enabled the tourism resources of Stone Forest to enter international metropolises with modernized means of transportation, greatly expanding the market for tourism marketing. In order to further subdivide the tourism market, Stone Forest carried out different marketing measures in different regions and launched the strategy of preferentiality for Yunnan citizens to visit Naigu Stone Forest, which provided a large number of visitors to Naigu Stone Forest Scenic Area. In response to the vigorous development of e-commerce, Stone Forest actively cooperated with the provincial, municipal and county-level commercial banks in improving the entrance guard system and network, establishing e-commerce platform of tourism and carrying out ticket preselling online to improve the online marketing platform. Stone Forest also plans to cooperate with such well-known tourism network operators as Ctrip and LY to provide more convenient service for tourists.   

No pains no gains. In the efforts of promoting tourism transformation and upgrading in the whole county, Stone Forest received good news continuously. This year Stone Forest won the title of “China’s Most Beautiful Geoparks” and ranked among the “2013 List of Most Beautiful China in Tourism”. Meanwhile, the trademark “Ashima” was recognized as famous trademark by the State Administration for Industry and Commerce. The brand connotation of Stone Forest was further improved.