Beyond pandas, open doors draw visitors from afar

I walked into the conference room not expecting much. Another tourism promotion event, another PowerPoint deck, another round of polished talking points. But something felt different last month as soon as I stepped into the room where officials from Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, told attendees that the city, with thousands of years of history, has much more to offer than its iconic giant pandas.

Industry representatives, policymakers, travel agents, and service providers packed the room shoulder to shoulder. There was an energy I had not felt at one of these gatherings in a long time.