Ten years ago, virtually no-one beyond mainland China had heard of Hainan Island – and even to most Chinese it was a faraway land historically nicknamed the ‘End of the Earth,’ where exiled court officials were shipped and left to rot. Yet in 10 years time, Hainan is expected to become Asia’s most-visited resort island. Such is the speed of transformation across all aspects of the Chinese economy, including travel and tourism.

Loosely translated on billposters across the island as ‘South of the Sea,’ Hainan is a tropical getaway that shares similar latitude with Hawaii, while its rainforest-clad hills and hot-spring peaks seem more closely aligned to its near neighbour Vietnam. Indeed, apart from the hoards of Chinese weekenders, honeymooners and corporate away-breakers – many attired in matching Hawaii-alike tropical shirts and shorts – swarming in all directions from Sanya airport and the Mandarin signage, there doesn’t initially seem to be very much that is Chinese about Hainan.

That said, just like the Chinese mainland, the heavy spending on infrastructure is unmissable. The highways criss-crossing the island are broad and expanding rapidly, swathes of high-rise condo blocks are beginning to characterize the skyline in urban areas, and a new high-speed railway is being constructed between the two main cities of China’s largest island (if you exclude Taiwan) – Haikou in the north and Sanya in the south.

The richest ‘New Chinese’, of course, eschew such mass-market transportation, and fly into the island on private jets and head straight to their luxury resort villas in custom-built limousines. In March next year, Hainan’s Visun Sanya Yacht Club is aiming to attract even more of these high-spending, high net-worth products of ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics.’

The inaugural Hainan Rendezvous will be a super swanky, invite-only three-day luxury lifestyle show promising “a dynamic showcase of the world’s finest jets,” plus private yachts and deluxe getaway properties.

For travellers to Hainan unaccustomed to such elevated New China comforts, Hainan still offers myriad weekender and short-break options centred around year-long sunshine, a raft of new, world-class resorts springing up across the south of the island, fabulous beaches, watersports, sailing and scuba-diving facilities perfect for teambuilding and incentives, spectacular hiking and cycling and around 20 golf courses – including a championship-class course designed by Robert Trent Jones Jnr.

All of which sounds just a little too good to be true. Isn’t this rather too much like a Chinese tourism brochure writ large, you wonder? This is, after all, China – a nation with virtually no history of beach culture or tropical resort infrastructure, isn’t it? And aren’t the Chinese famously averse to spending time in the direct sunlight? Does the Hainan hype hold really hold water? It’s not the new Bali, really… is it? The answer, even at this relatively early stage of Hainan’s development, appears to be: yes, though with certain caveats.

During the globally constrained financial times of 2009, occupancy rates at Hainan’s resorts have held up almost to the same 2008 levels, while those in the major cities of the Chinese mainland plunged alarmingly. Meanwhile, the volume of new flights into Hainan – Vietnam, Taiwan and Singapore are the latest markets to be linked – suggest diversification beyond Hainan’s primarily Chinese-oriented tourism market.

Attracting more and more tourists to the island isn’t just an exercise in showboating a Chinese island as a de facto tropical destination – but is becoming an ever-greater necessity. After Shanghai, Hainan ranks second in China for the volume of new hotels being opened in the next two years – and filling the projected 6,000 new hotel rooms set to open in the next two years will be no easy task.

Hainan’s tourism development began in the early part of the new millennium when Sheraton, Marriott and Hilton opened adjacent beachside resorts on Yalong Bay, near Sanya. At that time, the Miss World pageant was held here, and Sanya was catapulted almost overnight into the consciousness of Asia’s travel economy. Resort development has continued along Yalong Bay’s horseshoe-shaped bay of crème white sand fringed by tropical palms. It is a genuinely beautiful place.

In 2008, the Ritz-Carlton opened a new resort here, which the company’s CEO, Simon Cooper, describes as “at least the equivalent of anything we have anywhere in the world.” St Regis is expected to open at the far end of the bay in 2011. Park Hyatt is building a new resort around the headland at Sunny Bay, and Four Seasons will open one bay further along.

For now, Yalong Bay remains the number one attraction for visitors to Hainan Island, but that is destined to change as a greater diversity of resorts mushroom island-wide. Already, Mandarin Oriental has opened a world-class hillside resort at Coral Bay and Banyan Tree has brought its brand of Southeast Asian luxury to Luhuitou Bay.

Ninety minutes away, Le Meridien Shimei Bay overlooks a stunning – and otherwise totally undeveloped – 6km stretch of beach that segues into Riyue Bay, whose fearsome pipes already attract the world’s leading surfers for the Surfing Hainan wave-riding tournament each January. Surfistas, of course, are less concerned with staying in luxury resorts than they are about the encroachment of such developments onto the pristine beaches on which they test their wave skills. And that encapsulates the challenge ahead for Hainan.

Mass development may sate the expanding desires of Chinese travellers for tropical vistas, manicured fairways and floral print shirts – but balancing a precious eco climate with the desire to generate billions of tourism dollars won’t be easy. Bali can probably breathe easier… for a while.