[Photo by Yang Feiyue/China Daily]

Transportation will also be improved to woo more tourists from outside.

The local government plans to increase the number of chartered flights to Dali from Myanmar, Thailand, and Taiwan over July-September this year.

Dali airport handled 1.26 million travelers in 2015 and this is expected to hit 1.6 million in 2016, says Ma.

So far, there are 15 domestic air routes which connect Dali with major cities, such as Chengdu in Sichuan province, Chongqing, Beijing, Tianjin, Nanjing in Jiangsu province, and Wuhan in Hubei province.

A two-hour high-speed rail link between Kunming and Dali is expected to begin operations in 2017.

Separately, the capacity of the highway connecting Dali and Chuxiong city in central Yunnan will be doubled.