The Shanghai Tourism Festival was founded in 1990. The event starts on a Saturday in September every year and lasts for more than 20 days, covering sightseeing, leisure, entertainment, culture and sports, exhibitions, food, shopping, etc. There are nearly 40 projects in major categories, attracting more than 8 million tourists every year.
The Shanghai Tourism Festival is co-sponsored by the Shanghai Municipal Culture and Tourism Bureau and the Shanghai Municipal Commerce Commission. It is currently the largest and most influential large-scale tourism festival in China.
The Shanghai Tourism Festival is positioned as "a festival for the people" and with the theme of "Into Beauty and Joy", it promotes the "Belt and Road Initiative" through colorful and distinctive festivals in various districts and counties in Shanghai. The strategy’s requirements for tourism development have attracted strong support and extensive participation from all sectors of society. The Shanghai Tourism Festival has become a symbol of Shanghai's construction of a world-famous tourism city. Traditional activities include the Shanghai Tourism Festival Parade and Competition, Micro Tour Shanghai, etc.; it combines sightseeing, leisure, entertainment, culture and sports, exhibitions, food, and shopping. The integrated tourism experience and nearly 100 citizen-participated festival activities showcase the infinite charm of Shanghai’s urban scenery, urban culture and urban humanity in all four seasons to both domestic and overseas audiences.
The 2016 Shanghai Tourism Festival was held from September 10th to October 6th. The opening parade is the joyful start of every tourism festival. 2016 is the first year that Shanghai Tourism Ambassador Hu Ge attends the opening ceremony. Like all Shanghai citizens, he welcomes tourists from all over the world to Shanghai with the most enthusiastic gesture Travel and experience all aspects of the city. Like previous tourism festivals, activities such as float parades in various districts, rose wedding ceremonies, and the Nanxiang Xiaolong Cultural Festival were also held as scheduled. However, due to the new regulations in 2016 prohibiting the setting off of fireworks within the outer ring, the Century Park Music and Fireworks Festival at the closing ceremony of the tourism festival was suspended and moved to the Shanghai Central Sky Green Space for an aerial concert.
The 2018 Shanghai Tourism Festival came to an end on the 6th. This increasingly international tourism festival attracted 12.75 million Chinese and foreign tourists, with the number of tourists increasing by 5% year-on-year.
2018 is the 40th anniversary of reform and opening up. Shanghai has released the "30 Tourism Tips" with the goal of building a world-famous tourist city. The exciting new routes, new activities, and new supplies of the 2018 Tourism Festival are centered around the above themes.
During the Tourism Festival, Shanghai released the first batch of 50 popular leisure places for citizens, 5 classic industrial tourism routes, 7 "Reading Shanghai" micro-travel routes, and 5 expert travel routes in Shanghai. 74 tourism and leisure activities cover 16 districts of the city, highly integrating tourism with culture, shopping, sports, industry, rural revitalization, technology, cruises, etc.
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