Guangming Daily reporter Li Huishangjie
In the summer of Nileke County, Ili Prefecture, Xinjiang, the green mountains of Joerma are like daisies, full of greenery.
On the morning of June 10, the opening ceremony of Duku Highway, known as "the most beautiful highway in China", was held here.
More than a thousand self-driving cars from all over the country set off from various places along the Duku Highway to visit this "most beautiful road" and the beautiful scenery along the way.
The Duku Highway runs from Dushanzi District in Karamay City through Tianshan Mountain to Kuqa City, with a total length of more than 560 kilometers.
This road only travels for 5 months a year, what does it rely on to attract tourists from all over the world?
How to create a richer and more diverse travel experience for tourists?
How does the Internet celebrity highway retain the hearts of tourists?
The journalist made an interview about this.
1 Stimulate the tourist business card effect
Viewed from a high altitude, the Duku Highway runs through the middle of the Tianshan Mountains like a giant dragon, connecting the north and south of the Tianshan Mountains.
The picturesque scenery along the road is dizzying.
Walking on this road, you can "see the four seasons in one day, and the days are different in ten miles".
Going all the way, through the Red Gorge, Yuelong Pond, through the forest, and into the meadow, the four seasons alternate, which is very beautiful.
At the opening ceremony, 61-year-old Hubei tourist Deng Chunhua couldn't hide his excitement.
Starting in 2020, she and her husband "two people and one car" self-drive on the Duku Highway for three consecutive years.
She said that she couldn't see enough of the unique natural scenery along the Duku Highway. Last year, she didn't go all the way due to the mudslide, so she made arrangements earlier this year, waiting for the day when it was officially opened.
It is often said that the most beautiful scenery is on the road.
Xinjiang tourism business card - Duku Highway, even more so.
On the Duku road travel guide map, there are many beautiful scenery along the route: starting from Dushanzi District, passing through Dushanzi Grand Canyon, Baili Gallery-Tangbra, Air Grassland-Nalati Grassland, Jiuqu Eighteen Bend - Bayinbulak, Tianshan Pearl - Dalongchi, Kuqa Grand Canyon and other scenic spots, a road allows tourists to enjoy most of the fine scenery in northern and southern Xinjiang.
The photos of the Gobi, grasslands, lakes, snow-capped mountains, glaciers, canyons...the various landscapes along the way have aroused the admiration of tourists and tourism practitioners.
Song Bo, the person in charge of a tourism business, said that this "most beautiful road", which spans over 560 kilometers across the Tianshan Mountains and runs through the northern and southern Xinjiang, "contracts" 80% of Xinjiang's beautiful scenery and brings in a steady stream of passengers.
His company has opened six RV camps in Xinjiang.
Affected by the new crown pneumonia epidemic, whether the Duku Highway can be opened to traffic as scheduled this year, and whether foreign tourists can enter Xinjiang smoothly have become issues that Song Bo has been worrying about.
You must know that this road only has a passing period of 5 months a year, and a day's delay will result in a lot of losses.
"We will create all convenient conditions for tourists entering Xinjiang, and help the development of tourism enterprises through various measures such as dropping, returning, delaying, awarding and supplementing." The relevant person in charge of the Xinjiang Culture and Tourism Department made Song Bo eat. "Reassurance Pill".
The five prefectures (cities) along the Duku Highway have also worked hard to organize a series of colorful exhibitions such as Aken Playing and Singing, Prairie Naadam, Qiuci Mural Exhibition, Dream Light Festival, Tent Camping Festival, and Bonfire Food Festival. The cultural feast makes tourists have more expectations for travel in addition to self-driving.
2 Linkage to make the "corridor economy" alive
Speaking of the changes brought by the Duku Highway to tourism and life, Nuerguli Alabek, the head of Zhaile Ecological B&B Park in Turks County, seems to have a lot to say.
"Rural tourism today has developed from farmhouses to high-end homestays. My homestay has invested more than 3 million yuan, focusing on ethnic customs. Although affected by the epidemic in recent years, I can earn hundreds of thousands of yuan every year, which is much better than other businesses. ," Nulgul Alabek told reporters.
In the eyes of local people, Duku Highway is not only a scenic road, but also a road of happiness.
It not only undertakes the heavy responsibility of the transportation routes in the north and south of Xinjiang, but is more like a long winding river, transporting a steady stream of tourists along the route, so that people living here can feel the vitality brought by the tourism economy.
In the peak tourist season of 2019, this road can carry up to 20,000 self-driving cars on a daily basis.
Beishan Village, Age Township, Kuqa City is the first stop on the Duku Highway entering southern Xinjiang.
Since last year, Beishan Village, taking advantage of its unique geographical location, has invested more than 10 million yuan to comprehensively upgrade and transform the tourism facilities in the village, adding recreational items, and forming a new rural tourism model of "village committee + company + farmers", which has become a Internet celebrity check-in point.
Today, the villagers have eaten tourist meals, and the collective income of the village has increased from less than 50,000 yuan in 2020 to 350,000 yuan in 2021.
Yan Naimin, deputy secretary of the party group and deputy director of the Xinjiang Department of Culture and Tourism, introduced that in recent years, the prefectures (cities) along the Duku Highway have continued to improve supporting services such as sightseeing stops, sign systems, service areas, and parking areas along the Duku Highway to speed up construction. Self-driving camp and complete supporting facilities.
Around the whole Xinjiang, high-quality tourist scenic roads and self-driving tour routes are built around scenic roads such as G217, G219, and S101, which drive the construction of tourist node cities, tourist towns, and characteristic tourist villages along the way, and the "corridor economy" of transportation and tourism linkage is becoming more and more popular.
Continuous improvement of infrastructure can make the Internet celebrity road more popular.
In 2019, the Xinjiang transportation department launched the project of treatment and improvement of service quality on the Duku section of the G217 line.
During the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, Xinjiang will continue to build the Southern Xinjiang Silk Road cultural and tourism destination, the Tianshan tourism industry belt, and the rural tourism destination. Scenic roads such as the Duku Highway will play a role in threading the needle.
3 Improve the service extension chain
With the rapid development of the tourism industry and the promotion of the wave of informatization, tourists have an increasingly strong demand for personalized tourism. The integration and sharing of information put forward higher requirements.
In order to improve the travel experience of tourists, Xinjiang insists on both sightseeing and leisure tourism products.
The latest statistics show that there are 73 self-driving caravan camps under construction or planned in Xinjiang, and 48 camps in operation; there are 3,217 travel agents operating Xinjiang self-driving travel products on major online travel agency platforms across the country, and more than 600 self-driving product brands Among them, self-driving tourism product brands with the theme of homestay accommodation, travel photography services, and rural discovery accounted for 30%.
In addition to enriching the tourism experience, in the development of Internet celebrity highways, how to improve services and extend the chain has also become a key issue for Xinjiang's tourism department.
"It is necessary to rely on the highway network, with key scenic spots and scenic spots with development potential as key nodes, and promote the comprehensive development system of 'transportation + tourism' with high standards, high levels and high quality." Yan Naimin said that the Duku Highway is the A representative highway of Xinjiang landscape, it is also a beautiful business card for Xinjiang tourism.
Xinjiang will further build the most beautiful self-driving highway brand in China, integrate tourism resources in the regions along the route, improve the regional tourism system, jointly promote the healthy development of Duku highway self-driving tours, and create a more attractive tourist sight for tourists.
"Guangming Daily" (Version 03 on June 12, 2022)