How to make better use of venues used for sporadic international events like expos, and avoid letting them sit idle in between, is an issue that taxes people's mind all over the world. 

Officials and experts gathered yesterday at the Beijing Expo Sustainable Development Summit held in northwestern Beijing's Yanqing district to exchange views and find solutions to the sustainable development of the 2019 International Horticultural Exposition (Beijing Expo), which ran for half a year and received nine million visitors. 

Addressing the summit, Zhang Lannian, president of Beijing Expo Company, said his organization had managed to change the exhibition venue into a public park so as to achieve sustainable development of the site. This has so far hosted 160 events, including Beijing International Garden Festival, Beijing Strawberry Music Carnival and 2020 Beijing Expo Health Running, attracting nearly 400,000 visitors. 

Thanks to the 2019 Beijing International Horticultural Expo, Yanqing has formed a full-fledged tourism industrial chain of food, accommodation, transportation, sightseeing, shopping and entertainment, ensuring the park, and also Yanqing, have the capacity to host follow-up events, said Zhang. 

Boasting picturesque mountains and rivers and only an hour's drive from downtown Beijing, Yanqing is building itself into a leisure and vocation destination in north China. 

Zhang said his idea was to link gardening, culture and travel, outdoor fitness, science education related to nature and the application of gardening for health with the future development of the Beijing Expo Park. 

Meanwhile, Tang Xiaoyun, vice director of the China Tourism Academy, suggested building Yanqing into a place of horticulture suitable for living and working for different age groups, as family trips had accounted for more than half of the tourism market in the past five years. Yanqing had both the natural landscape and human-interest assets to meet demand, she said. 

Li Tie, economist with China Center for Urban Development, also said Yanqing as well as its Beijing Expo Park should follow the market and work out plans tailored to the different demands of investors and consumers. 

He said Yanqing, the host for the 2019 Beijing Expo and the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, had become a destination of four-season tourism in north China with the popularization of winter sports in recent years. 

Not only high-end consumer demand should be the focus on but also lower-income consumer demand, Li added.

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