4,000 Drones, 2,000 Travel Executives — Crostars Performs at Trip.com’s Chengdu Night 2025
On the evening of May 28, nearly 2,000 travel industry professionals from 66 countries gathered in Chengdu for the 2025 Global Cross-Border Tourism (Sichuan) Conference and Trip.com Group Global Partner Gala. The outdoor centerpiece of the evening — billed as “Chengdu Night” — was a drone performance by Crostars: 4,000 drones in formation, themed “Flight of Innovation.”
Three Acts in the Sky
The show was structured as three distinct movements, each tracing a different dimension of human civilization and cultural exchange.
The first act moved through time. It opened with ancient Egypt, where four million people gathered on the banks of the Nile to build the pyramids. It passed through second-century Rome, where 80 million people built the road network that held an empire together. Then to China’s Tang and Song dynasties — a population of 120 million driving Silk Road trade and the invention of movable type printing. Then the British Industrial Revolution — 450 million people and a steam engine. Then present-day China — 1.4 billion people and a high-speed rail network. Each moment held long enough for the scale to register.
The second act was China itself. The Great Wall opened across the night sky, signaling an open door. What followed was a sequence of regional images: the waterways and garden architecture of the Jiangnan region, the karst peaks of Zhangjiajie, Jingdezhen porcelain, Harbin ice sculpture. Then something lighter — pandas carrying hot pot, a face-changing performance from Sichuan opera. The 2,000 people in the audience were travel industry professionals from around the world; this was the part of the show designed to remind them why people come to China. The third act looked forward. Green veins of light spread across the sky, lifting fruit. A golden human figure raised an interstellar map overhead. The imagery mapped directly onto Trip.com Group’s stated mission: “Bold innovation, travelling far for the prosperity of humanity.”
What Trip.com’s Vice President Said
Sun Tianxu, Vice President of Trip.com Group, was in the audience. His response: “The picture of human civilization, the sweep of a great nation opening its doors, the height of travel and life — an epic-scale drone swarm performance. Honoured to have created this together with everyone.”
James Liang on the Future of Tourism
Earlier in the day, James Liang delivered the keynote at the Envision.2025 Global Partner Conference. He is co-founder and Executive Chairman of Trip.com Group. His argument was that the future of tourism lies in creating distinctive experiences. He named four dimensions of innovation that will define the industry: technology, culture, art, and content.
Crostars heard that framing and recognized it. The company has been arguing for the same combination — technology, culture, and art working together — since it was founded. The Chengdu performance was, among other things, a demonstration of what that combination actually looks like when it’s executed at scale.
The Track Record Behind the Performance
The Chengdu show is the largest drone performance Crostars has delivered for a single corporate event. But it sits within a broader pattern of work that uses drone shows as tools for tourism activation and cultural communication.
In early 2025, Crostars performed in Bangladesh to mark Pohela Boishakh, the Bengali New Year, and the 50th anniversary of China-Bangladesh diplomatic relations. Earlier work in Luohe, Henan province, helped turn the Sha-Yi River cultural corridor into a destination. During the 2024 Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holiday, the area received more than 100,000 visitors per day. The city’s total tourism revenue grew by 22.5%. A performance in Wuhan during the Yangtze River Cultural Arts Festival drew 1.447 million on-site visitors.
The logic in each case is the same: a drone show creates a reason for people to go somewhere specific, at a specific time, and tell others about it afterwards.
The Global Landmark Summit Initiative
Crostars founder Rocky Shi launched the “Let Brands Light Up the World” strategy in 2025. He developed the Global Landmark Summit Initiative alongside the World Low-Altitude Economy and Arts Development Committee. The initiative places drone performances at globally recognized landmarks — the Eiffel Tower, the Burj Khalifa, Shanghai Tower — using each performance as a form of city-level cultural communication.
The Chengdu Night performance for Trip.com is one instance of the same model applied at event scale. For more on how Crostars works with brands and event organizers, visit the C5 system page or explore the show portfolio. To discuss a project, contact us here.