MK sports mascot of the 2025 Asian Winter Games, at the Harbin Ice-Snow World in Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, Jan. 3, 2025. Photo: Xinhua" src="https://www.globaltimes.cn/Portals/0/attachment/2025/2025-02-09/e638895a-bfd0-4778-bb33-7a838a3822c2.jpeg" />

People pose for photos with a snow sculpture of "Binbin," mascot of the 2025 Asian Winter Games, at the Harbin Ice-Snow World in Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, Jan. 3, 2025. Photo: Xinhua

With the 9th Asian Winter Games Harbin 2025 in full swing, Harbin, the capital city of Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, has seen substantial growth in tourism, with bookings for sports-themed travel package surging more than 3-fold. 

An expert on leisure sports and tourism told the Global Times on Sunday that Harbin's booming tourism can be attributed to a combination of timing, location, and people. He also pointed out that it could serve as a valuable lesson for other cities looking to boost tourism by developing a robust sports event system and enhancing services.

Statistics show that the number of travel tour package bookings related to Harbin during the sports event has surged by 388 percent and inbound tours with Harbin as the destination has seen a 157 percent year-on-year increase, with a fast-growing number of tourists from Russia, the US, Hungary, South Korea, Thailand and other countries, according to a CCTV News report on Saturday.

An employee surnamed Yang from the China Travel Service branch located in Harbin told the Global Times on Sunday that there are more tourists visiting the city in recent days and more foreign tourists can be seen in the city this year than the same period in previous years. 

When searching for "Harbin" and "foreign tourists" on the social networking platform Xiaohongshu or RedNote in English, a slew of videos of foreign visitors traveling to Harbin in recent days came up. 

According to statistics from the local public security authorities, since December 17, 2024, the number of foreign visitors visiting Harbin has exceeded 100,000, a nearly threefold increase compared with the same period last year. Statistics released by the Chinese travel agency Tongcheng Travel on Friday showed that domestic flight ticket orders with Harbin as the destination have increased since February by over 20 percent year-on-year. 

Jiang Yiyi, dean of the College of Leisure Sports and Tourism at Beijing Sport University, told the Global Times on Sunday that several factors have significantly boosted the development of Harbin's tourism industry. These factors include the sports event being a major attraction for tourists, the city's growing popularity among visitors from southern parts of the country in recent years, and the timing of the event, which coincides perfectly with the peak season for ice and snow tourism, as well as the Chinese New Year holiday and winter vacation.

Jiang noted that Harbin can "serve as an enlightenment" for other cities in boosting tourism by building a strong sports event system for both international and domestic competitions and improving services including payment convenience and multilingual support.