163,200 Tourists Visited the Magical Place
The annual Ice and Snow Festival, featuring incredible ice sculptures, has opened abroad. The event attracts a stream of tourists to the capital of Heilongjiang, the northernmost province of China, founded at the end of the 19th century.
The ice park covers an area of 810,000 square meters, and 250,000 cubic meters of sculpting ice collected from the nearby frozen Songhua River are illuminated at night with colorful lights.
Some sculptures, as tall as multi-story buildings, depict Chinese-style buildings and bridges, fairy-tale castles, towers, and even the Temple of Heaven in Beijing.
The average number of visitors to the park per day has increased significantly, reaching approximately 30,000 last year, and hotel rooms in the city were fully booked in advance.
In 2018, the daily average number of park visitors was around 18,500.
Thus, the total number of visitors has nearly doubled compared to previous years.
During the New Year celebrations, the festival park was visited by more than five times the previous year’s figure — 163,200 people. Revenue amounted to 46.18 million yuan (6.45 million USD), nearly six times higher than the previous year.
This winter was particularly important for Harbin, as interest in the ice attractions sharply increased after social media reports spread that many citizens from the warm south had flocked to the snowy city, which is considered a key factor for the development of the “Ice and Snow” economy.
China lifted strict COVID quarantine restrictions in December 2022, and many businesses in the tourism sector gradually began to recover.