Harbin received 44.75 million tourists from January to June of this year, an increase of 9.5 percent year-on-year. Tourism revenue totaled 75.09 billion yuan ($10.91 billion), a year-on-year increase of 14.6 percent, according to statistics from the Harbin Tourism Administration.

Meanwhile, Harbin’s inbound tourism market has kept blooming.

During the first half of 2019, Harbin received a total of 110,000 inbound tourists, a year-on-year increase of 14 percent. Among these, tourists from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao reached 16,000, an astonishing 77 percent rise on the same period a year ago.

Japan, Russia, South Korea, the US and Taiwan were the top five sources of inbound tourists to the city. The number of their inbound tourists respectively reached 25,000, 17,000, 15,000, 12,000 and 12,000.

Analysts said that a raft of celebrations and exhibitions had been effective in promoting Harbin’s tourism market. In the first half of this year, it successfully staged an ice and snow festival, an international manufacturing expo, the sixth China-Russia Expo and the 30th Harbin International Trade Fair.

In addition, the upgrading of the ice and snow tourist scenic areas has been rated by industry insiders as one of the major reasons leading to the increasing tourist numbers. Tourism facilities provided in the scenic areas have continuously improved, with sales models optimized and services standardized to improve businesses competitiveness.

Harbin made it onto the top 10 list of “most influential tourist destinations in China”, at the 2019 China Tourism Industry Development Annual Conference in Beijing, on Jan 23.

Last year, Harbin was ranked one of the top 10 most popular cities for tourism, and one of the top 10 most popular tourist destinations during Spring Festival.