Winter tourism booms in Chinese county

There will be many cultural activities, including online events, to get as many as tourists as possible, in Pingyao county, Shanxi province, involved in this year's Spring Festival, which runs Jan 15 - March 8 to promote winter tourism.

The county tourism bureau used the online approach to get more people to participate, by calling for Spring couplets, wishes, poems or comments on Weibo, China's version of "Twitter", and a photo exhibition on Wechat, an online communications site. The county hopes to bring its traditional Spring Festival show to a wider group of people to increase interest in the county.

Northern China expected to see a drop in tourism at its major scenic spots, from past December to February each year, because of the severe cold, with a negative effect on hotels, so, the county began offering discount programs and looked for other market strategies to deal with the problem. It focused on improving quality as a World Heritage site and a AAAAA national tourist spot.

At the same time, the Datong-Xi'an High-speed Railway (between Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces), which passes through Pingyao, opened, contributing to a growth in tourists in winter. The bureau says that it had no fewer than 2,000 visitors to its old town site each weekend, adding some vitality to the northern winter.