'Blue Travel' vs 'Green Travel' in Sanya

“Resorts in the scenic spots as well as scenic spots in the resorts”, which is the consensus reached by a hundred travel agency managers after visiting the Tropical Paradise Forest Park at Yalong Bay, Sanya.

Different from pure sightseeing spots and folk-town style ones, Yalong Bay Forest Park with its unique features received wide recognition from the Hainan tourism industry. Based on the forest resources in Sanya, the forest park was started 6 years ago and is expected to become a showcase for the construction of Hainan into an international tourist island.

Hosting the largest tropical forest in China, Hainan island boasts abundant tropical rain forest resources and the unique ecosystem, thus envision a highly promising potential of tropical forest-based eco-tourism, which is still the ‘sunrise industry’ in China, but already the leading industry in some developed countries.

At present, in Hainan there are seven national-level forest parks, two provincial-level forest parks and a group of forest scenic spots. Statistics from Hainan Forestry Bureau shows that in 2008 Hainan forest travel received about 300 million tourists, generating a revenue of about 500 million yuan.

Obviously both the sea-based ‘blue tourism’ and the forest-based ‘green tourism’ have become indispensable in the development of tourism industry in Hainan, though in comparison, the blue still has much larger potential than that of the green.