Migratory birds in the Yellow River Delta National Nature Reserve in Dongying, Shandong province [Photo/VCG]

Shandong's cultural and tourism industries have witnessed high-quality development in the past decade, said officials of the Shandong Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism at a recent news conference.

In the past 10 years, the scale and structure of cultural and creative industries and boutique tourism industries in the province have been continuously expanded and optimized, and their overall strength has been greatly improved, making positive contributions to the transformation of old and new growth drivers in Shandong, said a local official.

In 2021, the added value of the cultural and tourism industries reached 686.72 billion yuan ($95.66 billion), accounting for 8.26 percent of the provincial GDP. Total tourism revenue increased from 451.97 billion yuan in 2012 to 1.1 trillion yuan in 2019, with an average annual growth rate of 13.7 percent.

The province has cultivated 23 cultural industrial clusters and 17 leading enterprises, and built 17 national-level cultural industry demonstration parks (bases) and 149 provincial-level ones.

The "Plan for Integrated Development of Culture and Tourism in Shandong" has been compiled and implemented, focusing on the construction of four cultural experience corridors along the Yellow River, the Grand Canal, the Great Wall of Qi State, and the Yellow Sea and Bohai Sea, in a bid to accelerate the integration of culture and tourism.

The Shandong Culture and Tourism Consumption Season has been held for six consecutive years, distributing consumption coupons worth about 733 million yuan to benefit local customers, which has greatly boosted cultural and tourism consumption and proved an impetus for regional economic development.