An aerial view of Langshan Mountain in Nantong [Photo/WeChat account: gotonantong]

The 2020 China Nantong Jianghai International Tourism Festival will be held in Nantong, Jiangsu province from Sept 12 to Oct 7, officials said at a press conference for the event on Sept 3.

The annual festival, which is hosted by the Nantong government and the Jiangsu provincial department of culture and tourism, will be unlike previous years in that the opening ceremony will be held simultaneously in Nantong, Shanghai, Wenzhou in Zhejiang province, and Huangshan in Anhui province.

Officials said that the move is in response to the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region. The ceremony will be broadcast live on television and online.

According to Ge Jinkun, director of the Nantong bureau of culture, broadcasting, television and tourism, this year's festival will consist of an opening ceremony, 11 municipal-level celebrations and 34 activities held in counties and tourist attractions.

They will include cultural performances, night markets, ticket discounts and tourism promotions across the city as well as in surrounding cities such as Suzhou and Wuxi.

Over the summer, Nantong began making efforts to boost the nighttime economy and has achieved strong results. Chongchuan district has held two night markets featuring intangible cultural heritage items, attracting nearly 30,000 visitors.

A night tour of the Nantong Forest Safari Park was introduced on July 8 and has since received more than 100,000 visitors, 70 percent of whom came from outside the city.

During the tourism festival, more incentives including travel subsidies and ticket discounts will be offered to meet people's consumption demands, officials said.

To accelerate Nantong's integration into the YRD region, the city has partnered with Shanghai to introduce Shanghai-Nantong tour cards and YRD tour cards, which allow card holders to visit attractions in the different cities at a much lower cost.

Officials said that in the future, Nantong will take advantage of the advanced high-speed railway network to facilitate tourism cooperation with more cities, including Hangzhou and Ningbo in Zhejiang province.