Included in the national top-level plan, Suzhou is accelerating its efforts to shore up weak links.
On July 21, Fan Bo, Secretary of the Suzhou Municipal Party Committee, conducted an inspection at the Suzhou Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Television and Tourism, and chaired a special symposium. He emphasized the need to strengthen the integrated advantages of the ancient city, classical gardens, Taihu Lake and ancient towns, make "Paradise on Earth, Most Beautiful Jiangnan" renowned at home and abroad, and accelerate the construction of an international tourism destination featuring Jiangnan water town characteristics.
The meeting pointed out that it is necessary to accelerate the improvement of quality and efficiency in cultural and tourism development, make full use of Suzhou's unique resource endowments, connect the gardens, ancient towns, Taihu Lake and other scenic spots into cohesive routes, plan and launch more high-quality tourist itineraries, reinforce the concept of "the city itself is a scenic spot", create an urban environment that delights nearby residents and attracts distant visitors, shared by both locals and tourists, and effectively transform the resource advantage of "excellent attractions within every hundred steps" into core competitiveness for the cultural and tourism sector. Great importance should be attached to close regional coordination and collaboration, deepen cooperation with neighboring cities including Shanghai, advance the joint World Heritage application for Jiangnan water town ancient settlements, vigorously expand the inbound tourism market, and jointly build internationally renowned tourism destinations.
The recently issued "15th Five-Year Plan for Building a Leading Tourism Nation" has established a new three-tier national tourism development pattern of "hub cities - key cities - featured destinations", listing Suzhou as both a "Key Tourism City" and a "Key City for Inbound Tourism". Being included in this national-level special plan has positioned Suzhou's cultural and tourism industry at a new pivotal stage of development.
"The city of Gusu embodies half the poetry of Jiangnan." The 2,500-year-old Suzhou ancient city, the classical Suzhou gardens hailed as "living museums", the breathtaking Taihu Lake landscapes celebrated as "the beauty of paradise", and Su embroidery, the foremost of China's four famous embroideries renowned worldwide... As the world's first "Model City of World Heritage" and one of China's first batch of national historical and cultural cities, Suzhou is never short of top-tier tourism resources.
The core problem lies in "insufficient integration and scattered IP symbols". Local scholars point out that high-quality resources such as Suzhou's classical gardens, water town ancient settlements, and intangible cultural heritage techniques are managed under separate administrative systems, with no effective integration and collaboration mechanism across different regions. Meanwhile, existing image labels such as "Suzhou Classical Gardens" and "Jiangnan Water Towns" operate in isolation, lacking a clear and unified core theme to unify them.
This special symposium emphasized the need to strengthen the integrated advantages of the ancient city, classical gardens, Taihu Lake and ancient towns. Prior to this, on June 28, when Fan Bo conducted a special inspection on Taihu Lake ecological protection and cultural-tourism industry development, he also stressed the importance of strengthening planning guidance, promoting the cultural and tourism resources along the route to connect into chains and gather momentum, and building the renowned brand of "Taihu Lake Scenic Splendor".
Looking further ahead, Suzhou aims to significantly expand its inbound tourism market. Statistics show that in the first quarter of this year, Suzhou received approximately 54 million tourist visits, with total tourism revenue reaching around 54.5 billion yuan, representing year-on-year increases of 8% and 8.5% respectively. Among these figures, the number of inbound overnight tourists reached 329,000, and foreign exchange earnings from tourism hit 490 million US dollars, growing by 16.4% and 14.4% year-on-year respectively.
From the local perspective, as the inbound tourism market continues to recover, the dividends of the 240-hour transit visa-free policy are being unleashed at an accelerated pace. Coupled with the dual opportunities of the "APEC China Year" and the "City of East Asian Culture" event year, Suzhou's inbound tourism has entered a critical window period for quality improvement and upgrading. Building differentiated competitive advantages through continuously iterated cultural and tourism products is the core priority to achieve breakthrough development in inbound tourism.
However, it should be noted that among the 22 cities shortlisted in the "Key Inbound Tourism Cities" cultivation list in the same period, except for Urumqi and Suzhou, the other 20 cities all have ports that implement the 240-hour transit visa-free policy, predominantly air ports. It can be said that Suzhou, which does not have an international airport, faces inherent limitations at the "first mile" of inbound tourism.
Therefore, how to leverage Shanghai's advantages and deepen regional collaboration has become an inevitable question for Suzhou to expand its inbound tourism market. This special symposium also mentioned the need to focus on close regional coordination and collaboration, deepen cooperation with neighboring cities including Shanghai, advance the joint World Heritage application for Jiangnan water town ancient settlements, vigorously expand the inbound tourism market, and jointly build internationally renowned tourism destinations.
This article is from the WeChat Official Account "City Evolution Lab", written by Yang Huan, and published with authorization from 36Kr.