Tourists visiting the Great Wall of China can now get takeaway delivered by drone

One of the drones in action, delivering food and water to tourists.

Hungry hikers on the Great Wall of China can now get a meal delivered from the air.

Chinese food delivery firm Meituan says its new drone service will bring food, drinks and medical supplies to customers at a section of the ancient monument on the outskirts of Beijing.

The unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) take off from a hotel rooftop to a watchtower on the southern extension of Badaling, the most popular section of the massive fortifications snaking across northern China.

The extension, which opened to the public last year, typically experiences sweltering summer temperatures.

It has no commercial facilities, making it difficult for visitors to replenish supplies.

The Badaling scenic area was first opened to tourists in 1958, and has since seen more than 200 million visitors from home and abroad.

Once at the delivery spot, tourists scan a QR code with their phones and place an order on the food delivery platform.

Once an order is received, a worker picks it up from a nearby store and brings it to the hotel rooftop, where it will be weighed and packaged.

An operator then attaches the package to the drone, which will fly on autopilot to the watchtower, where another worker waits to receive it and hand it to the customer.

The trip takes five minutes - a journey that used to take 50 minutes on foot.

And the drones don't fly back empty - workers load them with rubbish, which is then flown to recycling stations.

The Great Wall has a total length of over 20,000 km and consists of many interconnected walls, spanning 15 provincial-level regions including Beijing, Hebei and Inner Mongolia in the north, and Gansu and Xinjiang in the northwest.

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There is a fast-growing drone delivery business across China, which is the world’s largest manufacturer and exporter of civilian consumer drones.

Beijing is keen to develop its so-called "low-altitude economy", a wide range of businesses that use manned and unmanned civil aerial vehicles below an altitude of 1,000 meters.

Meituan completed its first drone delivery in the southern tech hub of Shenzhen in 2021.

It now operates more than 30 drone routes in multiple cities, which have handled more than 300,000 orders, including in the financial hub of Shanghai.

And earlier this month, UAVs were used to help repair a section of the Great Wall in north China's Hebei Province.

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