Dianchi International Coffee Culture Carnival Named a 2026 China Tourism Industry Impact Model Case

At a Glance (China Coffee Network): KUNMING, Oct. 19 — Good news arrived from the 13th China Tourism Industry Development Annual Conference held at Wudang Mountain in Shiyan, Hubei Province: the list of 2026 China T…

KUNMING, Oct. 19 — Good news arrived from the 13th China Tourism Industry Development Annual Conference held at Wudang Mountain in Shiyan, Hubei Province: the list of 2026 China Tourism Industry Impact Cases was unveiled during the conference’s core results session. Submitted by Kunming Cultural Tourism Group, the “Dianchi International Coffee Culture Carnival: Linking Ecology and Industry” project stood out from more than 700 entries nationwide and was selected as a model case of new business forms and scenarios for “culture and tourism plus” integration. The honour places Kunming’s practice of using coffee as a bridge for cross-sector cultural and tourism integration on the national benchmark stage.

This year’s case collection ran from August 2026 across eight categories, including consumption promotion and public benefit through tourism, digital and intelligent empowerment of the industry, new business forms and scenarios for “culture and tourism plus” integration, county tourism boosting rural revitalisation, tourism empowering urban development, inbound tourism service practices, tourism marketing and promotion, and green tourism innovation. Judging followed the principles of openness, fairness and professionalism, with multiple rounds of project submission, big-data monitoring and analysis, expert review and a five-day public online vote before the final list was set. Selected alongside Dianchi in the same category were Beijing’s Tanzhe Leisure Tourism Resort, Shanghai’s “Adora Magic City”, Shandong’s Pingchao (Table Tennis Super League) culture-tourism carnival, Henan’s Yuntai Mountain, Gansu’s Dunhuang micro-renewal project and Xinjiang’s Altay border-league event, among other representative projects nationwide.

As Yunnan Province’s selected case, the Dianchi International Coffee Culture Carnival has upheld the approach of “coffee as the medium, the lakeside as the venue and ecology as the foundation”, creating a vivid sample of cross-sector integration for Yunnan’s cultural and tourism sectors. Behind the recognition lies Kunming’s deep commitment to the idea that “lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets”, to the integrated development of culture and tourism, and to the building of a “lakeside spring city, a place of mountains, waters and flowers”.

In recent years Kunming has given priority to ecology and green development, treated the protection and restoration of Dianchi Lake as its foremost task and the cultural and tourism industry as a key engine of high-quality growth, working to turn ecological strengths into development advantages and cultural resources into consumption scenarios. Taking a single cup of coffee as its point of entry, the Carnival links Dianchi’s ecological protection, the upgrading of the coffee industry, the heritage of ethnic cultures and the renewal of the lakeside city — a concrete expression of “a life called Yunnan” that turns a city positioning into a lived, tangible picture.

Now in its third consecutive year, the Carnival runs for nine days each August, iterating on its programme format, spatial layout, industry content and omnimedia communication matrix. Built around an immersive lakeside coffee-consumption setting, it showcases the results of Dianchi’s ecological restoration in a direct way and actively explores a mutually beneficial path for conservation and tourism, turning the lake’s ecological assets into tourism revenue.

Three years of cultivation have produced a coffee-and-tourism symbiosis. Drawing on Dianchi’s natural endowment and tourism potential, the Carnival drives the deep integration of the coffee industry with lakeside conservation, tourism scene-building and consumer-market expansion. For visitors it offers a distinctive product combining coffee culture with natural scenery; for the wider industry it provides a replicable, scalable sample of “cross-sector integration, culture promoting travel and travel showcasing culture”, injecting new momentum into high-quality tourism development.

The 2026 edition drew 6.4642 million visits in total and generated RMB 55 million in direct sales. The east bank (including Daguan Park) received 1.9288 million visits, up 26.7% year on year; the west bank (including the Sunac district) 1.719 million, up 18.6%; and the various satellite venues 2.8164 million combined. After three years of cultivation, the Dianchi International Coffee Culture Carnival has grown into a landmark summer city IP for Kunming.

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