HAIKOU, China, Dec. 3, 2025 /Xinhua-AsiaNet/–
Recently, Hainan, China’s southern island province, formally released the White Paper on Shaping Hainan‘s Brand Image on Tourism and Culture and International Communication Strategy (2024–2025). The document, released by Hainan Department of Tourism, Culture, Radio, TV, and Sports, provides targeted solutions to support the long-term and healthy development of Hainan’s inbound tourism in the context of the island’s independent customs operation.
Spanning more than 150,000 characters across five sections and 20 chapters, the white paper offers an in-depth analysis of the development of Hainan’s inbound tourism against the backdrop of evolving global dynamics and industrial upgrading. It benchmarks Hainan against leading island tourism destinations worldwide and proposes innovative policy suggestions covering macro-level policymaking, media outreach, brand positioning, and more than ten specialized sectors.
Compared with the previous edition, the 2024-2025 white paper features four major innovations. First, it aligns closely with the 2025 timeline for the Free Trade Port’s independent customs operation and its significant implications for inbound tourism. Second, it broadens its research scope to fully include all major tourism destinations, ensuring broader and more representative data. Third, it introduces specialized tourism category analyses to enrich the dimensions of industrial chain research. Fourth, it improves data collection methods related to independent travel trends while refining the content of the “digital twin” chapter.
Notably, this year’s white paper further advances its “digital twin” research methodology by capturing first-person accounts from international visitors. According to the research team, this immersive approach – supported by field tracking of independent travelers – offers a comprehensive picture of Hainan’s inbound tourism market.
The research covered multiple source markets, including Central Asia, Northeast Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Europe. Researchers conducted field visits to major tourism destinations across Hainan and held in-depth semi-structured interviews with more than 50 stakeholders, producing over 250,000 characters of interview transcripts. Meanwhile, several hundred specialized questionnaires were collected from key international source markets, providing robust data support.
Industry experts believe that the white paper not only systematically examines the developmental foundations and key challenges of Hainan’s inbound tourism sector, but also capitalizes on the institutional advantages of the Free Trade Port to propose practical pathways for brand development and international communication. This provides important guidance for Hainan in seizing the opportunities presented by the island’s independent customs operation and strengthening its competitiveness in the global tourism market.
As of Oct. 15, Hainan had recorded more than 2 million inbound and outbound travelers this year, representing a 22.4% year-on-year increase. Among them, 430,000 foreign nationals entered Hainan under the visa-free policy, accounting for 88.9% of all foreign arrivals and establishing visa-free entry as the primary travel mode for international visitors. As the visa-free arrangements being optimized, citizens of 86 countries are now eligible to enter Hainan with visa exemption. At the same time, the province is accelerating the opening-up of air transport through the expansion of international flight services, with more than 70 international passenger routes launched. The combination of visa-free access and direct international flights continues to attract a growing number of foreign visitors to the island.