Sun Yeli, Minister of China's Ministry of Culture and Tourism Photo: VCG

The current stringent measures have significantly curbed ticket scalping of large-scale cultural performances across China, Sun Yeli, minister of culture and tourism, said during an interview after the closing meeting of the second session of the 14th National People's Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Monday. 

In response to the growing popularity of cultural tourism in China, Sun said that more efforts will be made to enhance the construction of cultural and touristic infrastructure and improve the quality of cultural and tourism services to meet the growing demands of the people with high-quality development in culture and tourism.

Since last winter, the ice and snow tourism in Harbin city, Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, has become a phenomenal hit thanks to the hospitality of local people and the thoughtful services provided to tourists from all over the country and beyond. 

The hot tourism in Harbin has helped drive the tourism industry across the entire northeastern region, sparking an ice and snow winter tourism craze. According to local statistics, from November to February, 1.2 billion tourist trips to Heilongjiang Province were made, generating a tourism revenue of 170 billion yuan ($24 billion), according to Sun.

From the barbeque craze in Zibo city, East China's Shandong Province to the ice and snow sensation in Harbin, the cultural and tourism industry has experienced a strong recovery and vigorous development since 2023.

In 2023, domestic tourist trips in China reached 4.891 billion, a year-on-year increase of 93.3 percent. The total expenditure of domestic tourists amounted to 49.1 trillion yuan, reflecting a year-on-year growth of 140.3 percent, the minister said.

When asked if the nationwide culture and tourism fervor will last long, Sun said people's aspiration for a better life has transformed into a demand for high-quality consumption, which in turn drives and promotes the high-quality development.

The popularity of tourism plays a very important role in boosting domestic demand, promoting employment, invigorating the market, and boosting confidence. 

"People's demands constitute a strong motivation for us. We will continue to introduce favorable policies and measures to unleash the potential of cultural and tourism consumption," Sun noted. 

The domestic market for performing arts has been thriving. Last year, there were approximately 440,000 commercial offline artistic performances nationwide, generating revenue exceeding 50 billion yuan. It's worth mentioning that online artistic performances were even more popular, with the revenue estimated to exceed 200 billion yuan and a participation of approximately 770 million people, Sun said. 

To tackle ticket scalping, two measures have been put in place and have significantly improved the situation. One is real-name ticket purchases and real-name entry. The other is the rule that the proportion of tickets openly sold for all large-scale cultural performances must not be less than 85 percent, Sun said. 

As to the difficulty in making reservations to museums and cultural institutions, Sun said that some museums have extended their opening hours and optimized ticket reservation mechanism, implementing flexible off-peak reservations, and dynamically adjusting the quota for ticket reservations.