澳大利亚攀桥活动吸引中国游客

With the Australian tourism sector outpacing many other parts of that country's economy, a new push is on by the Australian government to try to drum up more tourism business from China.

CRI's Su Yi explains.

Braving chilly weather and lofty heights, four players climbed to the top of Sydney's iconic Harbour Bridge to do battle in a Mahjong match, a popular Asian game played all over the world.

It's part of a new tour guided climb, launched this year featuring Mandarin-speaking guides to target Chinese tourists, who are considered a major force in Australia's tourism industry.

Tony Liu is one of them playing the ancient Chinese game on top of the world famous bridge.

"After all there is been a lot of Chinese tourists coming in to Australia in the last 10 years and I think it's a good move to introduce the Mandarin Climb and I think it's very successful so far and should continue to do so."

Chinese visitors, meanwhile, are said to have more than tripled their visits to Australia during the past decade.

And Paul Cave, chairman and founder of BridgeClimb, has had a first hand view of this surge.

"Gosh, it's been a fantastic growth coming in from China. In fact in our own case I think the number coming to BridgeClimb is up 30-35 percent from last year. The rate at which it's going up I'm sure China will be such a huge market for us in the years ahead and probably in the next 5 years I imagine that will be the situation for us,"

Tourism accounts for almost 3 percent of the country's GDP.

But the industry believes there is still scope for further growth.

In a move to further cement this trend, China Southern Airlines will also start flying A380 superjumbos on its popular Guangzhou-Sydney route later this year.

A move no doubt, hoping to further the increasing number of tourists from China to Australia.

For CRI, I'm Su Yi.