The areas around Bohai Bay have been set as key development areas for Hefei tourism in 2013. Hefei will attempt to attract visitors through extensive publicity in cities like Qingdao and Jinan.

North China, Northeast China and Northwest China have long been important sources for visitors in Hefei's tourism market thanks to its unique tourism products. But visitors from the areas around Bohai Bay, confined by inconvenient traffic, are lower than the areas mentioned above.

Most of the visitors choose to visit Yellow Mountain or Jiuhua Mountain in the south of Anhui province and usually transfer in Nanjing. "It's convenient for these visitors to go to Nanjing on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway. But the condition has already changed after the opening of the Hefei-Bengbu high-speed railway. Hefei is closer to Yellow Mountain than Nanjing, and it will cost less this way," said an employee at the Hefei tourism administration.

At present, the tourism market in Hefei still relies on Yellow Mountain. The city will combine the ecological landscape in the south – featuring the "famous city, famous lake and famous mountain" (Hefei, Chao Lake and Yellow Mountain) – with the high-speed railway to promote a trans-regional tourism product. Hefei is now striving to become the best distribution center for visitors from areas around Bohai Bay traveling to Yellow Mountain.