North China's Hebei province received 270 million visitors from home and abroad in 2013, creating 200 billion yuan ($32.6 billion) in revenue, a year-on-year increase of 17 percent and 26 percent, respectively.

The province invested 2.2 billion yuan in 2013, twice as much as the investment in 2012, to improve its tourism services.

It launched a campaign to inspect all its travel agencies, as well as its branches and offices across the province. A total of 1,228 agencies were scrutinized last year.

All the complaints from tourists were handled in an efficient manner, leading to direct economic losses of 69,000 yuan for tourists.

Thanks to the campaign, 95 percent of the visitors were satisfied with the province's travel services, especially with complaint handling.

Meanwhile, the province also held a group of activities to enhance its influence and brand image. Several online service platforms targeting both domestic and foreign visitors were launched. The followers of the Hebei tourism administration’s official microblog soared to 2.1 million from 300,000, the fastest of all official provincial microblogs in China.

The province organized the 18th North China Travel Fair, which attracted more than 1,000 exhibitors from all across China and travel agencies from 21 countries. More than 260,000 people visited the fair for travel information.

The fair saw 9,100 contracts worth 258 million yuan signed between travel agencies. A total of 10,800 intention agreements worth 190 million yuan were signed and more than 435,000 tourists planned to visit Hebei.

The province also signed contracts for 36 business tourism projects worth 8.65 billion yuan. The fair brought direct economic benefits of more than 38 million yuan to Hebei.

In addition, the province hosted tourism exchange events to promote its tourism resources with a group of scenic spots in foreign cities or states, such as the Summer Palace of Peter the Great in St Petersburg, Russia, and the state of Iowa in the US.

Hebei sent delegations to overseas tourism exhibitions and promotions throughout the year, bringing many business opportunities.

Inbound tourists grew by 3.7 percent year-on-year. Visitors from South Korea, Russia and Taiwan grew by 23.3 percent, 9.4 percent and 5.7 percent, respectively.

By Liao Wei and Liu Xiang