EU-China Tourism Year 2018 opens with official ceremony in Venice

"First of all, this will hopefully be a great opportunity to enhance people-to-people dialogue among Europeans and Chinese," Elzbieta Bienkowska, EU Commissioner for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, said at the ceremony.

"Yet, it will also be a very concrete manifestation of our cultural and economic diplomacy, because tourism is really a very serious economic sector in Europe," she stressed.

Alongside the celebrations, the first EU-China Tourism business summit took place on Friday with an aim to boost contacts and exchanges among operators from both sides.

Also attached to the ceremony, Italy and China signed a separate protocol to strengthen alternative routes to the traditional tourism destinations in both countries, which included the twinning of their respective UNESCO World Heritage Sites.