South China island attracts more foreign tourists

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 ◆ South China island attracts more foreign tourists

The number of foreign visitors to south China's Hainan Province in the past 11 months exceeded those from Hong Kong for the first time.

The provincial tourism administration said Monday that so far this year about 139,700 foreign tourists had visited Hainan, also China's second largest island in the South China Sea, 7,200 more than those from Hong Kong.

"Hong Kong tourists were the major clients of the hotel for years but the number of European tourists is overtaking them this year," said Jiang Maofei, general manager of the Haitian Hotel in Sanya, a harbor city in southern Hainan.

Tourists from Europe, southeast Asia, Japan and the Republic of Korea come for the well-protected environment and the island also attracts a number of foreign newly weds to spend their honeymoon here.

Russian tourists totaled 5,607 in the first ten months of this year, three times more than the same period last year.

Hainan has promoted itself abroad in the past two years, painting itself as an island with blue sky, green sea and white beaches.

Several international conferences, such as the Boao Forum for Asia, have been held here, providing the province an opportunity to introduce itself to the rest of the world.

The tourism administration's figures showed that a total of 11.16 million tourists had spent more than one day in the island by November this year, up 8 percent over the same period of last year.