"This summer, I made two trips to Lake Alakol in Kazakhstan," says Tao Qin, a Tacheng city resident in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

Lake swimming and mud baths are among the attractions in the increasingly popular tourist destination for Tacheng residents. The lake resort is just a two-hour bus trip from the Baketu land port located in the city, Tao says.

Many tourists like Tao and others from across China opt for a three-day tour program to the Kazakh lake, offered by the local office of Shaanxi Gaoke International Travel Agency.

Wang Long, the Tacheng branch manager, says that this past summer, they sent two tour groups every 10 days to the lake.

The China-Kazakhstan visa-free agreement has brought the lake — a distant view for Tacheng residents — into easy reach, according to Wang.

Border port cities in Northwest China's Xinjiang have seen a boom in cross-border tourism since the visa-free agreement took effect in November 2023.

The designation of 2024 as the Year of Kazakhstan Tourism in China and 2025 as the Year of China Tourism in Kazakhstan has also significantly boosted cross-border traveler traffic through Xinjiang's border ports, including Alashankou.

Popular Kazakhstan-bound itineraries — such as a one-day tour to Dostyk, a three-day tour to Lake Alakol, or a seven-day tour to Almaty — are receiving growing numbers of bookings.

Alashankou is also going to resume its international passenger transport lines to Ucharal and Taldykorgan in Kazakhstan.

Almaty received 54,100 Chinese tourists in the first half of 2025, up by 33.4 percent from a year earlier, according to the data from the tourism department of the largest Kazakh city.

Closer cooperation

Kazakh travel agency Nur-Gany and Xinjiang Tacheng Travel Service have been cooperating to jointly develop cross-border tour routes, including local reception services.

"The cooperation is progressing rapidly. We regularly receive tour groups from China and collaborate on new programs," says Kalymzhanova Nazym, Nur-Gany's general manager.

She says prospective programs include those on eco-tourism and cultural exchange, while the Tacheng company says it is planning a joint operation of Xinjiang-bound tours for Kazakhs.

In May, Kazakhstan's low-cost carrier FlyArystan launched a direct flight service between Almaty and Xinjiang's Yining city; in October, it would increase the flight frequency from two to three per week. The DKNews of Kazakhstan reported that this move would support the development of Kazakhstan-China relations and creates new options for travelers.

Better services

In response to growing tourist arrivals, Xinjiang's border ports have been working to provide greater facilitation.

The Horgos Cross-border Tourism One-stop Service Center became operational in August, and has attracted dozens of businesses to set up services, such as travel agencies, customs declaration firms, translation agencies, insurance companies and car rental businesses.

According to immigration officer Zhang Yongpeng, passenger traffic through Horgos Port this year exceeded 1 million in late August, a 60 percent jump from the previous year.

In the port's entry inspection hall, streams of people were using AI-powered self-service terminal machines for swifter entry registration, a process taking just over 10 seconds at its fastest, thanks to automatic identification and capture of individual passport information and native language checks, according to Zhang.

Among those waiting to clear customs was a tour group consisting of motorcycle enthusiasts from countries including Poland, Canada and Greece. Their journey started in Kyrgyzstan, passed through Kazakhstan, and will end in Nepal.

Grzegorz Brzeczyszczykiewicz, a motorcyclist from Poland, said that the motorcycle team would ride all the way to Urumqi, and that this was not his first visit to China.

"This is a great country with great culture and great history."

The hospitality industry in Xinjiang has been actively enhancing its services to meet the growing and diverse needs of international visitors.

Ma Qiang, a young entrepreneur from Liuxing street in Yining, is running a homestay inn, a restaurant and an ice cream shop in the designated historical and cultural district, which he says has played host to a larger number of foreign visitors this year.

"They are intrigued by the architectural style here and are drawn to the scenes of young people dressed in ethnic costumes singing and dancing in the street," he says.

To better serve foreign tourists, he plans to customize multilingual menus and enhance the foreign language communication skills of his employees.

"Deep in my heart, Liuxing street doesn't only belong to Xinjiang, to China, but also to the world," says Ma.

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