Hungarian counterpart Mihaly Varga and Chinese official Wei Hongtao expressed the wish for additional cooperation.

Počivalšek told the STA at the lakeside resort of Bled, where a tourism panel was moreover held on Tuesday as part of the Bled Strategic Forum, that Slovenia had never before hosted an event attended by so many big players from the field of tourism.

The minister explained that the cooperation among the 16 countries and China was mostly oriented towards two goals.

The first is stronger promotion of Slovenian tourism in China, which is something that is easiest achieved as part of such a group.

"On one side you have the giant country of China and on the other 16 relatively small countries. When they decide for trips abroad, we need to provide products they will find interesting and this is something that none of these 16 countries can do on their own," he said.

Along with the promotion, Slovenia also wants to become part of Chinese round trips. So far two routes were open, namely for Warsaw and Budapest, while a third one for Prague is opening end of September.

Last but not least Slovenia is striving to become "a bigger bridge" for the economy, which would also include tourism cooperation between Asia and Europe.

Hungarian Economy Minister Mihaly Varga stressed the Slovenian minister and him had the same goals. The results of the joint activities of the 16 countries are already starting to show, he said, expressing the wish for even closer cooperation.

Wei Hongtao of the China National Tourism Administration also noted that some results could be seen and that cooperation was strengthened since last year's meeting. He hopes this trend will continue.