THE 184-day World Expo that ended in Shanghai a week ago helped attract plenty more visitors to Qingdao.

    According to Qingdao’s tourism authorities, the city received 509,000 overseas tourists during the World Expo between May and September, up 10 percent over the same period last year.

    The number of domestic tourists exceeded 28 million, up nearly 14 percent, while tourism revenues climbed over 23 percent to nearly 34 billion yuan.

    To attract visitors, Qingdao launched a series of tour packages featuring the sea, yachting, resorts, architecture, culture and festivals. Most packages were two days long.

    Qingdao has been listed as one of the 10 Chinese cities to have benefited most from the World Expo by Ctrip.com, the most popular tourism Web site in China. It was the only northern Chinese city on the list. The other nine cities were Suzhou, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Wenzhou, Huangshan and Wuxi. (Jane Lai, Fu Jun)