A group of 300 tourists in Shenzhen paid a visit to the city's international industrial raw material city, becoming the first batch of tourists for an industrial tour, the Shenzhen tourism bureau said on Sunday.

This is part of the city’s effort to promote urban tourist resources to native Shenzhen residents.

The tourists, mostly middle-aged or senior people, went to the Huanan city and the Dafen canvas village before returning at five in the afternoon.

Since the industrial base was located far away from city downtown area, they were provided with services of transportation, tour guide and a lunch meal.

Analysts at tourist industry said industrial tour had a prospective future and local residents kept a high interest to visit these industrial sites, especially those that were closely related to people’s everyday life, such as food processing or cloth making, etc.

However, it is not an easy job to launch industrial tours. Most enterprises do not consider them as a tourist resource and therefore do not have any lanes for visitors when building the construction site.

Moreover, some enterprises do not want to disclose their key parts to visitors for sake of business confidentiality, thus making the site less attractive.

(Chinanews.cn September 12, 2005)