YICHANG, May 2 (Xinhua) -- More than ten thousand travelers visited the Three Gorges Dam, the largest of its kind in the world, in central China on the first day of the Golden Week holidays.

    Xu Ting, an executive with the Tourism Development Company of the Three Gorges Dam, said their business will be very flourishinga s an increasing number of tourists are interested in this huge project, which is expected to be completed this year.

    The company has made a plan to combine the dam with the Three Gorges' natural scenery into one golden route for tourists.

    Local officials estimated that the number of travelers visiting the Three Gorges Dam during the seven-day holidays might rise between eighty thousand to one hundred thousand.

    According to local statistics, the dam received twenty-two thousand travelers during the first four months of this year, up 43 percent over the same period of last year. An estimated 1.1 million travellers will visit the Three Gorges this year.

    Construction of the Three Gorges Dam project began in the early 1990s and involved an investment of 203.9 billion yuan (25.2 billion U.S. dollars). It is designed to control flooding on the Yangtze River and increase China's electricity production. Enditem