In the first quarter of 2014, Zhangjiajie received a total of 4.16 million tourists, realizing tourism revenue of 2.918 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth of 9%. It received over 150 thousand overseas tourists, up by about 10%. Besides, this period saw a sharp rise in independent travelers, reaching over 60%.
Facing the new situation of relatively slow international and domestic tourism market and structural changes in tourism consumption, Zhangjiajie put forward the development strategy of "Improving Quality, Upgrading Zhangjiajie". It has chosen a strategy involving scientific development, transforming the tourism from single to compound styled integrating sight-seeing, leisure, and holidays, expanding the tourist scope from domestic to both international as well as domestic, and changing the tourism economic growth pattern from quantity-oriented to quality-oriented, thus advancing from a large tourism city to a powerful tourism city. Since 2013, 72 key projects for the development strategy have involved a total investment value of more than 20 billion yuan. Most of these projects have chosen green themes like "culture and ecology".
