Cattle forage on a grassland with blooming iris lactea flowers in northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Photo: China News Service

The regional government of China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region has recently inked the deal for 25 tourism projects, with a total value of 28.77 billion yuan ($4.02 billion), as part of its efforts to promote high-quality tourism development, the Global Times learned.

The deal was made during the 2023 Xinjiang Tourism Development and Promotion Conference on Tuesday, with a focus on infrastructure for high-end hotels and resorts.

The tourism industry construction sector has signed a total of 12 key projects, including a strategic cooperation agreement between Xinjiang's culture and tourism department and the municipal government of Jingdezhen, located in East China's Jiangxi Province, for the development of cultural and creative products, as well as an inclusive agricultural and tourism integration project.

The total contract amount for these projects is 16.147 billion yuan. Once completed, these projects will significantly enhance the influence and visibility of Xinjiang's cultural tourism throughout the region, providing strong impetus for the high-quality development of the local cultural and tourism industry.

"In order to develop better and faster tourism in Xinjiang, we need to further strengthen infrastructure upgrading and improvement of functions," Chaogong, senior researcher of the Tongcheng Research Institute, said.

This came just two months after another industry event, the 2023 Xinjiang Cultural Tourism Industry Trade Expo, which took place in April and saw intentional transactions worth 2.07 billion yuan.

Xinjiang's tourism industry is experiencing a booming trend in its pursuit of high-quality tourism development. From January to May of this year, Xinjiang welcomed 72.704 million tourists, a year-on-year increase of 34.91 percent, with tourism revenue amounting to 62.479 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 74.86 percent. These figures have exceeded the levels recorded during the same period in 2019.