Tibet receives 5 M tourists in first eight months

A tourist poses for a photo in front of the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet, Sept 8, 2010.

Southwest China's Tibet autonomous region received more than 5 million tourists in the first eight months this year, up 24.5 percent from the same period last year, the regional tourism administration announced Wednesday.

While the vast majority of visitors were Chinese, the "roof of the world" also received almost 160,000 international tourists from January to August, up 43.9 percent from the same period last year.

The region's tourism income grew 37.3 percent year on year to hit 4.44 billion yuan (about 653 million U.S. dollars) in the past eight months.

Wang Songping, deputy head of the tourism administration, attributed the growth in tourist arrivals to efforts to promote tourism in winter, sponsoring a series of Tibetan culture activities and promoting Tibetan tourism in new markets in Oceania and eastern Europe.