The opening ceremony of the ninth conference on Guizhou tourism industry development will take place on August 15 this year in Qingyan town, Guiyang, capital city of Guizhou province.

The theme of this year's conference is upgrading the industry and reformation. 800 delegates from various fields will be in the conference, making plans for tourism development in Guizhou province.

Other events include a field trip, an exposition, as well as a forum on tourism and the big data industry.

Guiyang, the major venue for this year's conference, has been developing the big data industry. The highlight of the conference will be introducing the application of big data and cloud-computing in the tourism industry, such as crowd control, tourism e-commerce, applications and satellite navigation.

The conference will also focus on expanding the tourism market. It looks forward to the fact that investors from around the world have intentions to make deals with Guizhou. Until August 5, 30 projects were selected for appraisal, and the investment reached a total of 45.8 billion yuan ($7.4 billion).

Since 2006, the conference has been held annually for eight years. In commenting on the event, Fu Yingchun, head of the Guizhou Tourism Administration, said that the conference has become a main impetus for local tourism development.

In an effort to improve Guizhou's profile as a tourist province, the conference, on behalf of the provincial government, hired renowned writer Feng Jicai as "Guizhou cultural ambassador" as well as 11 other celebrities to represent Guizhou's tourism culture.