People visit the 2025 China Culture and Tourism Industries Expo in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, Sept. 12, 2025. (Xinhua/Wu Zhizun)

The 2025 China Culture and Tourism Industries Expo, which opened Friday in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, has attracted more than 2,000 domestic exhibitors and 50 overseas travel agencies.

The expo features a 40,000-square-meter outdoor area with a cultural and tourism IP parade of floats. Its 60,000-square-meter indoor exhibition hall showcases new business models, scenarios, and products in the cultural and tourism sectors, including digital clusters, low-altitude tourism, and intangible cultural heritage creative products.

The highlight of this year's expo is the combination of high technology and cultural tourism. Robots not only provide services such as venue introductions and catering but also perform as musicians and dancers. Five well-known Chinese museums, including the National Museum of China and the Palace Museum, are located on site and feature more than 400 popular cultural and creative products.

Gao Zheng, vice minister of culture and tourism, said in the opening speech that in the first half of this year, 80,000 large-scale cultural and related industry enterprises in the country achieved operating income of 7.13 trillion yuan (about 1 trillion U.S. dollars), up 7.4 percent year on year.

Chinese residents made more than 3.28 billion trips, spending 3.15 trillion yuan, up 20.6 percent and 15.2 percent respectively, fully demonstrating the strong vitality and broad prospects of China's cultural and tourism industries, according to Gao.

The three-day expo is hosted by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and organized by the Hubei provincial department of culture and tourism and the Wuhan municipal government.