Qingdao, as an important port city and well-known tourist city in northern China, has the natural advantage of developing cruise economy. Qingdao Port is the "Northern Gateway" of the Maritime Silk Road and the "Oriental Bridgehead" of the Silk Road Economic Belt, maintaining trade ties with more than 700 ports from more than 180 countries and regions around the world. With the official opening of Qingdao International Cruise Home Port in 2015, and In 2016 Qingdao became the fourth China Cruise Tourism Development Experimental Area, Committee of Cruise Industry of World Tourism Cities Federation set up in Qingdao at the same time, the development of Qingdao Cruise Industry entered the fast lane. In 2019, Qingdao received a total of 93 voyages with increase of 31% from a year earlier, the overseas arrivals and departure cruise passengers has been exceeded 180,000 with increase of 60.7% from a year earlier.

Shandong Port Group Co., Ltd. was officially established in Qingdao on August 2, 2019, which is the specific practice of provincial party committee and the provincial government to implement important instructions of General Secretary Xi Jinping "through the sea" , to speed up the construction of a world-class marine port", and it is to further promote the high-quality development of coastal ports in shandong province, to build a demonstration area for local economic and trade cooperation in the SCO and to build a strong maritime province.
The newly formed Shandong Port Group, a state-owned enterprise group approved by the provincial government, it is the main body of investment, financing and market operation to coordinate major transportation infrastructure construction such as ports in the province, promote the integrated development of ports, and will assume the main responsibilities of port planning, investment, construction, operation and security management according to the province's port function positioning and development strategy , the implementation of comprehensive development of ports, scientific guidance of port function expansion, and promote the integration and development of port cities.
Shandong Province Port Group, as the implementation of the province's port reform, will build a world-class maritime port as the goal, vigorously promote the province's port to intensive, collaborative transformation, to achieve the province's port planning "one game", management services "one net", resource development "one map", and constantly improve the province's coastal port integration level of development, to promote Shandong province in the development of marine economy in the forefront of the country.