China’s theme park operator OCT Group and Tongcheng Tourism (LY.com) jointly announced on June 4 that they had reached a strategic cooperation deal, in which OCT will invest a total of over RMB 2 billion (around USD 311.9 million) in the latter.

As a result, the OCT Group will become a key strategic shareholder of Tongcheng Tourism. Both parties will leverage the synergy of offline resources and online data to derive mutual benefits and achieve win-win performances.

A spokesperson of the OCT Group said that the alliance with Tongcheng will contribute to integrating quality resources and enhance the group’s development strategies of “Cultural + Tourism + Urbanization” and “Tourism + Internet + Finance”. It will also open up new dimensions for optimizing the industrial chain and strengthening the cultural tourism industry.

In recent years, the OCT Group has scaled up its investment in comprehensive cultural tourism projects and now covers more than 50 cities in China. In 2017, OCT secured its ranking among the top four global theme park groups for the fifth year and registered 42.88 million visitors in attendance.

Following the capital investment, the two parties will work together comprehensively to develop the business landscape, optimize tourism informatization, integrate destination resources and upgrade user consumption. Tongcheng Tourism will also continue to beef up investments in the cultural tourism sector.