Tourism development in Wuzhishan/Five Finger Mountain Hainan Island

Wuzhishan is located in the centre of Hainan Island. Road transportation is the only way to get to Wuzhishan for the moment as there is no airport in the City. There have been discussion building a new airport in Wuzhishan, but so far no progress has been made.

Tourism developed rapidly since 1988. Before the full operation of Sanya Airport, all groups arrived and departed from Haikou Airport. The regular tour groups that went through Hainan would spend 4 nights on Hainan Island, one night in Xinglong , one night in Sanya，one night in Tongza (Wuzhishan) and the last night in of course being in the Capital City Haikou. This was necessary as the only road from the north to the south went down the centre of the island. The major expressways down the east and west coast were not completed at that time. 1988－1998 was the golden time for Tongzha tourism. Wuzhishan was a must during the 4 nights on Hainan Island. There were more than 10 big hotels in Tongza (Wuzhishan), not to mention all the small budget hotels.

Sanya Airport opened in 1995 with the first few flights to Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen. Then the local travel agencies designed new schedules which skipped Tongza as it took almost 6 hours to travel from Tongza to Haikou. The road winds through the mountains, it used to be a very hard drive. Most of the groups just visited Haikou, Xinglong and Sanya.  Wuzhishan suffered lots of monetary loss due to the new Highway and most of the hotels were closed in 1998.

Now trips to Wuzhishan are getting popular again. With the increasing pollution in the big cities, it is hard to find a real natural, quite and clean place like Wuzhishan, Tourism is growing again!

Caddie Lu has visited Wuzhishan many times. She loves this place and in her opinion it is a pure clean, quiet place with the local population being very friendly. Sanya is getting very commercial and more international with direct flights from Moscow, UK, South Korea & Japan….She is trying her best to promote Wuzhishan area as a new destination for a different type of holiday experience than Sanya or the rest of Hainan Island.

Tourism development in Wuzhishan/Five Finger Mountain Hainan Island: Must to option