[Photo/China Daily]

Tourism boom

By 2020 the island province aims to attract more than 80 million tourists a year, including 1.2 million from overseas, and total annual tourism revenue is projected to surpass 100 billion yuan.

Separately, sea tours along the eastern fringe of the province and forest-themed trips are also being developed.

Camp sites for self-drive tourists are on the anvil too, and a total of 100 towns and 1,000 distinctive villages will be developed before 2020 to spice up visitor experience.

As for transportation, air links are being improved. The island province added 30 outbound flight routes last year, taking the total number to 51. As a result, Hainan is now linked to Russia, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia in the region, as well as Australia, Italy and Germany.

The number of inbound tourists for 2016 at the end of November was 645,500, up 19.5 percent over the previous year.

China Southern Airlines carried 7.39 million travelers to and from of Hainan in 2016, up 5.2 percent on year. It carried 25,700 travelers to and from Hainan on Jan 13 alone, the first day of the mass migration for Chinese New Year in 2016, according to Liu Jing, the deputy general manager of the company's Hainan branch.

The airline now offers flights from Hainan to 37 destinations at home and abroad. And it increased the number of seats by 13 percent in 2016.

It is planning to link Sanya and New Delhi via Guangzhou and Haikou and Yangon via Guangzhou in 2017, say Liu.