The Palace Museum recently announced it will stop selling onsite paper tickets and only sell tickets online starting late October.

The museum will gradually decrease the number of paper tickets available beginning July.

According to Shan Jixiang, director of the Palace Museum, it is more convenient for tourists to buy tickets for the Palace Museum online as they can arrange their visits in advance, and it will also help tourists avoid visiting during peak periods.

The Palace Museum launched its online ticket system in 2011, and nearly half the tickets are now sold via the internet. The tickets sold at the onsite ticket office in the first quarter of 2017 decreased by about 10 percent from the same period a year earlier.

The Palace Museum, China's former royal palace from 1420 to 1911, also known as the Forbidden City, received nearly 16 million visitors in 2016.

The museum set a daily quota of 80,000 visitors in 2015 due to safety concerns caused by overcrowding.