Anhui's Cultural Tourism to Embrace New Experiences: 'Technology + Culture and Tourism' Paint a New Picture of 'Poetry and Distant Horizons'

Signature projects like "Aerial Tours of Natural Landscapes + Urban Landmark Sightseeing" and the X-META Immersive VR Park... In the near future, a host of fun, engaging, and tech-driven cultural and tourism projects may soon emerge in Anhui Province. On December 24, reporters learned from the Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism that the province will accelerate the integration of technology to empower the development of the cultural and tourism sectors. By the end of 2027, the goal is to cultivate 3-5 nationally influential leading enterprises in cultural and tourism technology and create a range of new cultural and tourism consumption scenarios, formats, and models with strong appeal and market competitiveness.

In recent years, driven by innovations in cultural expression, continuous updates in technological methods, and the growing demand of tourists for deeper cultural experiences, immersive cultural and tourism performances have gained widespread attention as a significant new format in the industry. Our province will leverage virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies, integrating them with Internet 3.0, lighting, and projection technologies, to actively advance the development of infrastructure for immersive cultural and tourism entertainment services. This includes virtual digital concerts, immersive cinemas, and dome theaters. By applying digital technologies such as the metaverse, the province will organically blend physical spaces with digital content to develop diverse formats like large-scale VR experiences, immersive night tours, and immersive districts (or parks). Additionally, the introduction of immersive performances, themed dining, and script-based entertainment will help create integrated cultural-commercial-tourism consumption complexes that combine shopping, entertainment, and cultural experiences. Efforts will also be made to encourage eligible entities—such as tourist attractions, cultural and museum venues, archaeological site parks, cultural and tourism consumption clusters, tourism leisure streets, and tourist resorts—to build immersive environments that bridge historical and contemporary spaces through the interaction of physical and virtual settings. The province will advance projects like XR immersive exhibition experiences, the "Meta · Bookstore" digital-intelligent new scenario, and the X-META Full-Sensory VR Park, while continuing to enhance the influence of immersive cultural and tourism brands such as "Sanhe Moonlit Night," "Fuyang Shuangqing Bay Water Night Tour," "Yangtze River Never-Night City," "Hui Show," and "Xidi Night Tour."

Our province will leverage digital technologies such as holographic projection and 3D modeling to develop new scenarios including digital exhibitions, digital performances, cloud-based entertainment, cloud-based performances, cloud live streaming, and cloud exhibitions. Efforts will be made to promote the digital and intelligent transformation and upgrading of cultural infrastructure, such as public cultural venues and theaters, and to build smart libraries and digital museums. The province will also advance the digital development and preservation of cultural and tourism IP, empowering new tourism experiences, the protection and transmission of intangible cultural heritage, and innovative displays. By utilizing technologies like knowledge graphs and bare eye 3D, the province will innovate exhibition formats and models for revitalizing cultural relics. It will also drive the deep integration of cutting-edge technologies with traditional performances to create immersive theaters and digital music theaters. Furthermore, efforts will focus on revitalizing scenic areas, commercial districts, industrial heritage sites, and nighttime gathering zones by incorporating digital performances, interactive light shows, and similar content. The province will encourage performing arts troupes and intangible cultural heritage inheritors to develop online performance programs and conduct cloud-based broadcasts and exhibitions to enrich the supply of online performance content. Additionally, initiatives will be promoted to facilitate collaboration among cultural and museum institutions, universities, and enterprises in jointly developing original digital exhibition content, as well as digital cultural display and experiential projects centered on Huizhou culture, Yangtze River culture, Huaihe River culture, Grand Canal culture, and Huangmei Opera culture.

Low-altitude flight sightseeing is emerging as a new tourism trend, offering visitors novel experiences. Our province will innovate the application of low-altitude technology to develop cultural and tourism products such as low-altitude flight sightseeing, experiences, competitions, performances, and training. Efforts will be made to promote the construction of green aviation flight camps in Hefei, Wuhu, Huainan, and other regions. On the basis of improving technical standards, operational regulations, and service systems, the province will steadily and orderly carry out manned flights using new types of low-altitude aircraft and develop signature projects such as "aerial views of natural landscapes + urban landmark sightseeing," fostering new cultural and tourism consumption formats like flight experiences and drone formation performances. The province will also encourage cities such as Hefei, Lu'an, and Wuhu to host low-altitude sports events, including aeromodelling, simulated flights, and flight design programming. In key mountainous scenic areas like Huangshan, the application of drones in transportation, monitoring, emergency response, and other fields will be explored to establish a new integrated development model of "low-altitude technology + mountain tourism."

At the same time, our province will comprehensively implement the "AI+" initiative, targeting tourist attractions, cultural and museum venues, tourism leisure streets, tourism resorts, and archaeological parks, among others, to expand intelligent services such as AI trip planning, AI customer service, AI tour guiding, AI commentary, and AI marketing. Support will be provided to leading enterprises to tackle key technological challenges in developing and applying large-scale cultural and tourism models, creating a series of "AI + cultural tourism" application scenarios. Anhui will accelerate the integration of large-scale cultural and tourism models into emerging sectors such as agro-tourism, commercial tourism, sports tourism, industrial tourism, and meteorological tourism, actively fostering new business models and formats like "AI + rural tourism," "AI + night-time economy," and "AI + cross-sector collaboration." 

Source: Anhui Business News