Beijing receives 44m tourists in Q1

Beijing received 43.7 million tourists in the first quarter of 2012, up 9.3 percent from the same period last year, new figures have showed.

Of the total, 42.7 million were domestic tourists while one million were from overseas, the local statistics bureau said in a statement.

The tourists brought the city 69.2 billion yuan ($11 billion) in revenues, an annual increase of 9 percent.

The top three sources of tourists were the United States, Japan and South Korea.

The number of US tourists rose 6.9 percent year-on-year to 147,000 while Japanese tourists surged 25.7 percent to 107,000. Tourists from South Korea, however, dipped 0.4 percent to 104,000.