Will China's new hi-tech airport prove to be a flight of fancy?

It's been hailed as an architectural masterstroke and symbol of China's explosion onto the world stage of global travel.

But Shenzhen International Airport's brand-new terminal has a problem: nobody seems to want to go there.

The £612million travel hub opened at 6am yesterday with much fanfare as a Shenzhen Airlines flight took off to next-door Mongolia.

Smiling staff handed out commemorative model planes to passengers on the flight as dozens of golf carts circulated the lounge to give free rides for anyone in need.

But despite claims on its website that tourists can be spirited away to far-flung locations including Sydney, Dubai and Cologne, no airlines actually appear to offer services to or from any of these cities, The Independent reported.

In reality, flights only seem to go to regional destinations such as Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.

The only US destination is Anchorage in Alaska - and those flights are all cargo deliveries by UPS and Federal Express - while there is only one direct flight to Europe from Chongqing, and that’s Finnair’s service to Helsinki.

Unlike the largest Chinese cities, Shenzhen does not allow a visa-free stopover.

'One has to wonder who will fly here from outside China, given the choice of flights to Hong Kong and to Macau, both actively promoted in the UK, both nearby and both visa-free,' Neil Taylor, whose travel firm Regent Holidays pioneered travel to China, told the paper.

'Shenzhen had its appeal as a small village when China first opened up in the late 1970s, but tour operators will find it hard to promote now.'

Designed by the Rome-based architect Studio Fuksas, Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport covers a staggering 4.3 million square feet (400,000 sq m) and is capable of handling 45 million passengers a year.

Among its tourist attractions is a former Soviet aircraft carrier (complete with fighter jets) called Minsk World. Another is Dapeng Fortress, a battle site during the 19th-century Opium Wars against the 'British colonial invaders'.

The terminal resembles a giant white aeroplane covered in a perforated, honeycomb-like skin of metal and glass that admits maximum sunlight, reducing energy consumption while rainwater is recycled in toilets and used to water indoor plants. Features also include stylized white “trees” that serve as air-conditioning vents.

It is also the first airport in China to feature a 10-megawatt solar power plant, which cranks out enough power to support 10,000 US households per month.

The airport's lack of commercial interest is in stark contrast to other travel hubs in China where, in the first 10 months of 2013, passenger traffic rose 11 per cent to 297.6 million.

This is in part down to the industrialization of domestic travel but also thanks to increased interest from overseas.

Last week the French airline, Aigle Azur, announced a new link from Paris Orly to Beijing while British Airways this year added a link from Heathrow to Chengdu.

But foreign interest mostly concerns the country's major cities and the expected surge of connections from Europe to large 'secondary cities' in China has not materialized, reported The Independent.