On August 23, the 2021 Smart China Expo (SCE 2021) was grandly opened in Chongqing. With the theme of "Technology Empowering Smart Tourism," the Smart Tourism Exhibition Hall of the Pavilion for China-SCO Digital Economy Cooperation focused on brightening the brand of Chongqing as "A Land of Natural Beauty, A City with Cultural Appeal" and exhibiting new achievements and applications of numerous industry benchmark enterprises in China. It created a wonderful and poetic future scene, becoming a highlight of the expo.

Restructuring new scenarios for "A Land of Natural Beauty"

The 1,300-square-meter Smart Tourism Exhibition Hall of the Pavilion for China-SCO Digital Economy Cooperation looks magnificent. With countless high-tech elements, it is full of the sense of the future. Chongqing Cloud Platform for Smart Culture, Tourism, Broadcast, and Television became a star project. Jointly built by Chongqing Municipal Commission of Culture and Tourism Development and Chongqing Tourism Investment Group Co., Ltd., this platform integrates advanced technologies such as the Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing, digital image processing, AR (VR), network communication technology, software system integration, etc. It involves fields like culture, cultural relics, museology, tourism, broadcast, and television. The framework of "one center, three platforms" makes government agencies, business institutions, and the masses an interconnected and organic whole, restructuring the new scenarios for "A Land of Natural Beauty."

The big data center, which is the system's hub, brings together cultural and tourism information in real-time with unified access standards to realize joint contribution and sharing of resources.

The management service platform is responsible for decision-making. As a convenient and comprehensive management platform for government agencies, it offers support for decision-making and operation.

The industry service platform, serving as the industry's infrastructure, provides institutions and enterprises with such services as online display, investment attraction, and trading of cultural and tourism projects. Online exhibition and procurement are available as well. It has also integrated business resources that had joined the consumption alliance to benefit the people and set up joint marketing mechanisms with businesses to empower the cultural and tourism market from all aspects.

The cultural and tourism assistant's public service platform provides visitors with timely, reliable, and rich cultural and tourism information. It brings together Chongqing cultural venues, historical sites, cultural relics and sculptures, ancient literature, scenic spots, and other resources for global tourists to visit on the cloud. In addition, the combination of the top intelligent narrator and AR technology comprehensively enhances the offline touring experience.

"The platform integrates multi-dimensional management services work in the development of Chongqing's culture and tourism industry, involving decision-making management, operation, and administrative management, user services, big data investigation and analysis, industrial upgrading, etc. It will certainly add driving forces to the development of Chongqing's smart tourism industry," introduced a person in charge of the exhibition hall.

Weaving new landscapes connecting Chongqing and the world

The Smart Tourism Exhibition Hall emphasizes international exchanges and cultural diversity, emphasizing the exchanges and mutual learning between various domestic cultural and museum units and SCO member states.

The platform "Chongqing — Discovering SCO Multi-Language Cloud Exhibition Hall" publicizes and displays SCO countries' relevant cultural and tourism recommendation information in a comprehensive and multi-angle way. The platform embraces the ruins of eight wonders launched by SCO, including Daming Palace National Heritage Park of China, Issyk-Kul of Kyrgyzstan, Mughal heritage in Lahore of Pakistan, Golden Ring of Russia, etc. It serves as a one-stop cloud platform allowing visitors to appreciate the cultural and tourism scenery in SCO member states and opens a new window for visitors to understand and recognize the culture and tourism of the 18 SCO countries. It has become the world's first cultural and tourism information cloud platform with the most centralized information on SCO culture and tourism, the widest dissemination channels, and the most languages used.

In addition, Chongqing Tourism Cloud Booth showcases such achievements as the Tourism Resources Spatial Data Management Cloud Platform System, Chongqing Two Rivers and Four Riversides GIS Platform, AR/VR Ideological and Political Digital Learning Platform, and Chengkou Red Digital Culture Center. Among them, Chongqing Two Rivers and Four Riversides GIS Platform uses 3D visualization technology and artificial intelligence technology to carry out real scenario modeling and restoration of the 11-square-kilometer core area of the Two Rivers and Four Riversides, display the macroscopic and trend data of the area in an integrated manner, and realize visual management of human and material data.

The Hikvision booth exhibits the Locajoy Operation and Management AR Hawkeye Platform, the agile safety management system for scenic areas, the AR guide system for scenic area tourists, and the dynamic attraction visiting route system for scenic spot tourists. The China Unicom booth displays the achievements of the Chongqing tourist big data platform, the national tourism situation platform, one-code tour, the integrated management, and control system of scenic spots, etc. The China UMS booth showcases the achievements of the Shanchengtong platform, Ginkgo smart culture and tourism consumption big data analysis platform, and the all-for-one tourism big data platform.

The Tencent Culture & Tourism booth presents Travelling in Yunnan with One Mobile Phone, smart tourism in Hainan, and the digital exhibition hall of intangible cultural heritage Hometown Henan — Yellow River's Gifts. The Meituan booth displays the tourism service quality monitoring platform & the large screen of culture and tourism brain data, the large screen of red tourism, the ticket booking ability model, the smart scenic area construction case, etc. The iFLYTEK booth shows AI virtual robots, using a number of artificial intelligence, which can realize real-time broadcasting in more than 30 languages and dialects, directly output videos from texts, and support face-to-face communication with tourists.

The Wulong Karst tourism industry booth exhibits the Wulong All-for-one Tourism Big Data Center. The Tuimall Technology booth shows the digital rural big data platform and the CR platform for 3D smart scenic areas. The Chongqing Cable Network booth exhibits the Bayu culture and tourism cloud, the 5G+cultural relics expo, the live streaming of a light-rail train running through a building, and other achievements. Among them, the 5G+cultural relics expo makes full use of the rich resources of the museums and cultural relics and AR technology to render and restore the unexhibited, incomplete digitally, and faded cultural relics and present them to the public through 5G and mobile phones.

An immersive experience in future tourism

 While digging deeper into the elements of culture and tourism, the smart tourism exhibition hall displays a large number of new digital and intelligent achievements and applications in the culture and tourism industry and creates many interactive projects of science and technology.

For example, at the booth of Chongqing China Three Gorges Museum, the MR technology integrating AR and VR technologies enables visitors to walk into an old map of the late Qing Dynasty called the Expanded and Revised Map of Chongqing City. Wearing the HoloLens holographic device, an experiencer will be placed in the scenarios of streets, shops, and wharves in the late Qing Dynasty. Through the integration and interaction among people, scenarios, real cultural relics, and virtual content, the experiencer can vividly understand the stories behind the cultural relics.

The VR project of the Underwater Museum of White Crane Ridge uses 3D scanning data to process cultural creativity through technology, revives the original appearance of historical relics and cultural sites in the way of virtual presentation, and carries out the VR interactive display in combination with VIVE mainstream devices so that experiencers can follow a guide to visit the virtual exhibition hall, ruins and cultural relics in the VR system in a unique experiential, cultural tour.

The Dazu Rock Carvings Research Institute — Huawei Technologies booth presents the original appearance of Dazu Rock Carvings through the interactive way of light, shadow, and radar, and uses an MR large screen combined with action recognition and AR technology to overlay virtual scenarios based on the physical sculptures so that experiencers can talk with the thousand-year-old rock carvings, which is the first new experience form in China. In addition, experiencers can also copy the MR large screen experience form and cultural content to the small program on a mobile terminal and complete the interactive experience between the audience and the sculptures by scanning them with a smartphone.

The Phoenix Digital Technology booth displays the dynamic digital scrolls of Along the River During the Qingming Festival and A Panorama of Rivers and Mountains and uses 3D engine technology to create 3D models of original painting elements so that the elements in the painting can move and come alive, bringing people a sense of being engaged in the painting or the scene.

Smart technology empowers the economy and enriches life. The Smart Tourism Exhibition Hall of the Pavilion for China-SCO Digital Economic Cooperation creates various tourism technology application scenarios for visitors to fully experience the infinite charm of future tourism.