On October 24, the launching ceremony of the 2024-2025 SCO Tourism and Cultural Capital” tourism and culture season and the week of presentation on tourism in Kazakhstan took place in the Urban Memory Museum on Zhongshan Road. With a focus on tourism and culture, Qingdao works hard to conduct cooperation and share resources on cultural tourism with cities in SCO member states, become both a source and destination of tourists for cities in SCO member cities. Qingdao strives to promote high-quality cooperation on cultural tourism to contribute to enhancing people-to-people exchanges.

In the event, many cultural tourism organizations from China and Kazakhstan signed a joint cooperation agreement in an effort to achieve an in-depth integration of all tourist factors, facilitate resources sharing and mutual exchanges of tourists, and co-build brands of cultural tourism with international reach. Furthermore, an exhibition was held to present the charm of tourism in six SCO member states including Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

On October 25, a round table meeting themed “Dialogue in Qingdao” was held in the China-SCO Technology Transfer Center. In the meeting, cultural tourism organizations from home and abroad intensively exchanged opinions on mutual recognition and sharing of cultural tourism resources, and innovation of cultural tourism products in an aim to facilitate the building of platforms and make a new blueprint for cooperation on cultural tourism between SCO member states.

Tourism and culture are two important areas where SCO member states cooperate. In July this year when the SCO Astana Summit was held, Qingdao was officially designated as the 2024-2025 tourism and cultural capital of the SCO, and therefore opened a new chapter in the internationalization of its cultural tourism. Qingdao will work unremittingly to take advantage of the title “2024-2025 SCO Tourism and Cultural Capital”, improve increasingly the tourism environment, carry forward exchanges and mutual learning between civilizations, and push ahead with in-depth cooperation between SCO member states on culture, tourism, MICE and other sectors.  (Cao Sen)

 A tourism company from Kazakhstan is promoting cultural tourism routes in its country. By Cao Sen