Tai'an, Shandong province, was listed among the top 10 Chinese tourist cities for digital assets for the third time at a tourism forum recently held by Tsinghua University.

The tourist city list was one of seven lists released on the day. The other six involved tourist attractions, the most popular tourist countries and regions, the most popular countries along the Belt and Road Initiative route, best domestic airlines, best international airlines, and best hotels.

A digital asset is something that has value and can be owned but has no physical presence, such as online images, software, and data.

The digital assets of Chinese tourist destinations are calculated based on three indexes, including the amount of online information about the tourist destination and the proportion of positive information, the degree of consumers' concentration on the tourist destination on the internet, and the number of online recommendations of the tourist destination and the proportion of positive recommendations.

Tai'an has been promoting the transformation and upgrading of its tourism in recent years by establishing an "internet + tourism" development model, placing the internet at the heart of its plans for developing tourism in the city. 

As part of the plan, the city's tourism bureau built an online store for its tourism by cooperating with online travel agencies, including Qunar and Ctri.

A tourism app has been created to provide information about eating, living, traveling, entertainment and shopping in Tai'an for tourists.

A specific app has also been created for the Mount Tai Scenic Area, providing tourists with a professional tour guide service and information on the area's attractions. The scenic area came fourth on the China Tourist Attraction Digital Asset top 10 list, which was announced at the event.

The forum, sponsored by the National Image Research Center of Tsinghua University, discussed in depth the building and maintenance of the tourist city's image in the era of social media, and the positive impacts of intelligent marketing on tourism.

Leaders of domestic and overseas well-known digital media, including Microblog, Baidu, Google and Facebook, representatives from renowned tourist cities, and tourism experts and scholars attended the forum. 

Tai'an is listed among the top 10 China tourist cities for digital assets at the third Tour Destination and National Image of China Forum held at Tsinghua University, Beijing. [Photo/WeChat account: SDTXTA]

The top 10 domestic tourist attractions in digital asset including Mount Tai Scenic Area, Huashan Mountain in Guizhou province, Jiuzhai Valley in Sichuan province and West Lake in Zhejiang province are presented. [Photo/WeChat account: SDTXTA]