The open tourism at the Mogao Grottoes has greatly promoted the splendid art of the Dunhuang Caves and the deep value of traditional Chinese culture. On the other hand, the increase in visitors and imbalance of visitor flow eventually endangered the stability of the caves’ microenvironments, thus threatening the conservation of sensitive archaeological sites, and also lowered the quality of the tour experience and visitor satisfaction. With the achievements of digital storage and representation technologies at the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, we have constructed a Visitor Center at the Mogao Grottoes site in which contemporary information technologies and display methods have been employed to allow visitors access to a comprehensive presentation of the historical background of Dunhuang and the Mogao Grottoes through immersive displays of significant caves in combination together with cave tours. In this way, a new mode of open tourism at the Mogao Grottoes has been established, which not only improves daily visitor capacity, but also better protects fragile cultural relics,ensures permanent conservation and sustainable utilization of the Mogao Grottoes.
