Barely a month after the Dalian Wanda Group announced in late August plans to build a $9.5-billion theme park in Jinan, Wang Jianlin, the richest man in China and chairman of Dalian, said on Saturday the company would soon open the first phase of a tourism park in Hefei City.
Built on 160 hectares of land, the 34-billion yuan phase 1 of the upcoming Hefei Wanda City would feature a theme park, hotels and shopping malls. The second phase would be an indoor recreation project. There is a third phase, but Dalian is still in the planning stages, reported Reuters.
The two projects are just the 20 such complexes that Wang plans to build across China as he aims to make the newly opened Shanghai Disneyland become unprofitable within the next 10 to 20 years, reported Atimes.
However, because of the economic slowdown, consumer spending has slowed down in some areas. From a 15 percent hike in 2015, outbound tourism is expected to register zero growth for 2016, said the China National Tourism Administration. But Chinese moviegoers continued to spend on films with Dalian’s Wanda Cinema Line Corp, the conglomerate’s theater arm, enjoying a 12.8 percent boost in box office sales in Q2, a 61.4 percent improvement from Q1.
The $5.1-billion spending for Hefei Wanda City is part of Dalian’s heavy spending on entertainment, sports and tourism projects worth $22.5 billion until 2020. On Oct. 16, the first Ironman triathlon in China would be held at Hefei Wanda City.