At the beginning of Ye Xinran's movie "Manslaughter 2", the protagonist's family of three set up a tent in a small forest, set up tables and chairs, and was camping, and the father and son were playing football in the woods, and a warm scene jumped on the screen.
This way of vacation is becoming the choice of more and more people. The Spring Festival holiday is coming, the camping merchants have long been in the fist, waiting to welcome customers, and some new stores have specially chosen to officially open on the second day of the Chinese New Year.
It is not difficult to find that the major tourism report data in 2021 are reminding people of the popularity of short-distance travel and peripheral travel, among which the search volume of keywords such as picnic and camping continues to rise.
In January, the owner of a campground in Moganshan is already busy with New Year activities. He prepared some dishes with a quite New Year's flavor, such as New Year pig rice, native chicken pot, and also planned some special activities, such as digging winter shoots, playing rice cakes, making green balls, in addition to the bonfire party and the starry sky music cocktail party, etc. He sent exquisite teaser pictures to Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and the following people asked "how to register".
A campsite owner in Guangzhou also dressed up the campsite early, and the campsite's promotional page highlighted that the camp was packed with a warm room bath, and there were electric blankets and cold sleeping bags in the tent, so there was no need to worry about the cold.
Camping began to become popular
On January 29, the China Tourism Research Institute and Mafengwo jointly released the "2021 Global Free Travel Report". The report shows that the popularity of peripheral travel increased by 251% over the same period last year, and the travel preference changed to short, frequent and fast "micro vacation". At the same time, the driving force of young people's travel has shifted to interest and socialization, and in the top ten ways to play in 2021, camping has become the most popular way for young people to play. The data of Little Red Book shows that the number of little red book camping notes released during the eleventh holiday in 2021 increased by 1116% compared with the same period last year.
The industry will call 2021 the first year of exquisite camping, but this lifestyle did not appear abruptly, but experienced a process from niche to mass.
Camping enthusiasts are accustomed to distinguishing between "backcountry" and "fine camping". Some bloggers have even defined two concepts separately, wilderness camping refers to camping in areas without infrastructure, testing survival skills. Fine camping encompasses more elements: infrastructure, natural environment, aesthetics, accommodation, dining, entertainment, etc., with an emphasis on comfort, leisure and entertainment.
In the eyes of industry insiders, camping has moved from professional, niche, hardcore to mass, leisure, entertainment and lightweight. Veteran players need very professional outdoor survival skills and outdoor equipment, and mass recreational camping may be a camping experience by pulling up a canopy on the grass of the park, making a cup of hand-brewed coffee, or drinking afternoon tea on a farm with various tools and props.
"Now camping represents a trendiest, up-to-date way of life." Lao Bai, the owner of a campground in Xiamen, said, "That's why many people, he is not a camping enthusiast, he is also willing to try." ”
In the eyes of this industry insider, in fact, camping reflects people's pursuit of more close to nature, a healthier lifestyle or a more sincere thing.
Writer Jimmy Harry once described the healing of nature on man in "Animism and Beauty": You can carefully understand the feeling of the wind sweeping through the hair... At this time, I temporarily stepped out of the torrent of life... Let yourself be completely disconnected from the rolling worldly currents.
Camping enthusiast Trail loves the immersive social experience of camping. Koji is a real estate agent whose side business is related to camping. By posting videos of scenes such as people around a campfire and guitar accompaniment singing together on a short video APP, and revealing in the comments section that this is the reality of offline activities, Xiaolu directs people who comment on "how to participate" to their private domains. As a recruiting officer, Xiaolu will release local camping and recruitment information from time to time in the circle of friends, and each camp is different, and the project and price are also different.
In Koji's view, in this way, it is easy and pleasant to gather strangers together to sing, chat, and break the distance, which is a new social experience, with a sense of immersion, experience, and comfort.
The thrust of self-media
But why isn't it until 2021 that camping starts to become popular?
In Lao Bai's view, self-media is one of the important promoters of camping and heating, and self-media makes it easier for niche enthusiasts to find the same kind and gather together. At the same time, it is also the thrust of social media that makes the needs of people who have no interest before be stimulated.
Self-media is not only to stimulate demand, but more importantly, it can more accurately select the potential audience of camping. Therefore, in the operation of camping hotels, the old white summed up: the use of Internet thinking. In his view, the camping hotel and the traditional hotel operation is very different, in the past the hotel through travel agencies, OTAs and other ways to promote marketing, the current camping hotel to vigorously use self-media, KOL, through kol to tell the selling point of this product in a multi-faceted way, even if the disadvantages of the product must be told in a better way through story packaging.
For example, the camping hotel is not like a chain hotel, its biggest feature is uncertainty, maybe it is camping, suddenly the wind is blowing, the rain is coming, the story that needs to be advocated at this time is that the choice of camping must embrace uncertainty, which is the charm of camping. Therefore, Lao Bai will cooperate with KOLs to accurately locate the crowd, which is the key to drainage.
In Lao Bai's view, the camping hotel is a bridge, and the camping xiaobai can feel and test whether he really likes this way through the camping hotel, rather than spending a lot of money to buy a series of camping equipment.
However, due to the fact that such a business model is not complicated, it is easy to be imitated, and new players continue to step in, and the enterprise investigation data has shown that in the first five months of 2021, 6957 new campground-related enterprises were newly registered, an increase of 286.5% year-on-year.
It's not just about tourism
In addition to the pusher of self-media, there is also the boost of outdoor related industrial chains. Tmall Taobao overseas platform data show that in the first half of 2021, the transaction volume of domestic camping equipment increased by more than 100% year-on-year, of which the highest-selling tent products increased by 84% year-on-year, and outdoor tables and chairs increased by 106%. According to reports, this is related to the recovery of China's supply chain, and domestic outdoor sports brands have achieved breakthroughs in the global market.
According to the "Alibaba 2021 "Eleventh" Holiday Consumption Travel Trend Report", the number of tent and camping bookings increased by more than 14 times from the previous month. Data from the Tmall platform in September 2021 also shows that self-driving tours have led to a nearly 20% increase in sales of on-board rice cookers; sales of camping, surfing and fishing products have increased by more than 50%, 30% and 20% respectively year-on-year.
According to the observation of industry insiders, with the popularity of camping, the industry began to develop more subdivided, and more incremental opportunities appeared. Taking tents as an example, there are professional tents that focus on lightness, automatic tents that focus on simplicity, and cotton tents that focus on aesthetics, etc., and the positioning of each other is differentiated.
At the same time, fine camping isn't just rewriting tourism. On New Year's Day this year, a beach café in Xiamen officially opened, which is located on a niche beach, neither facing the street nor near the commercial district, and even driving to a section of uneven dirt road. Operating on a yacht parked on the beach and tables and chairs under a few rooftops outside the yacht, the café relies heavily on pitches from local KOLs to open its doors.
In Shanghai, there is a camping theme light food store that opened in the second half of last year and was built in the mall similar to the real scene, the road surface is paved with dry branches and pine cones, the tents and field utensils are well set up, and the photos can achieve the effect of camping with fake realities.
Not only the catering industry, but also shopping mall operators are also trying to create this kind of urban micro-camping, urban micro-vacation experience project.
But how long can a camping fire burn? Will the industry stall downwards in a rush of speculation? In the face of such a problem, Lao Bai thinks that a healthier, close to nature lifestyle will be precipitated, which can also carry more content, such as the combination with the farm, different themes and even the creation of IP.
(In the text, Lao Bai and Xiao Lu are pseudonyms)
Ye Xinran is a reporter for the Economic Observer
(The Economic Observer)