Over 80 million foreign and domestic tourists visited east China's Shandong Province in 2001, an official from the provincial tourism bureau said on Monday.

He said that over 830,000 overseas tourists, 14.6 percent higher than the previous year, visited the province last year, bringing a total revenue of US$ 380 million a 21.4 percent increase on the previous year.

Most of the overseas tourists were from the United States, Germany, Canada, Britain, France and Russia, while the domestic tourists were mainly from provinces of Jiangsu, Henan, Hebei, Zhejiang, Liaoning, and Heilongjiang, and the municipalities of Beijing and Shanghai.

However, the official noted that the majority of the tourists are from within the province.

As the pillar industry of Shandong Province, tourism has kept an annual double-digit growth in the past few years.

( Xinhua News Agency January 28, 2002)