The Long-term Doctrine of Nianhuawan Cultural Tourism: To Become the "Tesla" of the Industry

Source of this article: Times Finance Author: Zhang Wen

"Long stone roads, century-old courtyard-style green brick houses, mottled walls with vague slogans from the last century, and old shops such as traditional handicrafts, watch shops, barber shops, and grocery stores scattered along the streets." This is the taizhou Yelan Old Street recorded by China National Geographic magazine five years ago.

Located on the riverside, it is formed by the alluvial of the Jiaojiang River in Taizhou, and was once named "YeLan" because of its low terrain and reeds. At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, it was once prosperous and merchants gathered, and it was an important commercial distribution center along the coast of Taizhou. But as the city evolved, the dilapidated old streets began to become a singing memory.

Fortunately, it does not preserve the past, and after injecting tourist and modern elements, YeLan Old Street is revitalized and becomes a new urban landmark. Antique Ming and Qing Dynasty buildings, human fireworks in the deep alleys of Qujie Street, and glittering atmosphere lighting, Yelan Old Street, which is operated by Nianhuawan Cultural Tourism, officially opened on February 16. The product layout of "one pavilion, one water, three streets, one section and one show and three pavilions" makes this place another model for the restoration of historical and cultural blocks.

Courtesy of Ye Lan Old Street Enterprise

For the "trader" Nianhuawan Cultural Tourism, based on the traditional integration of contemporary expression is not unfamiliar, it has been implementing the product logic is not simply and simply let the characteristic town "repair the old as old", but through "creativity, innovation, creation" to dig deep into the local culture, seek the differentiation of the project.

Use boutique thinking to do cultural tourism

In Taizhou Jiaojiang, there are many old streets with historical heritage, which have their own glorious past. It's just that in the change of history, vicissitudes have replaced prosperity, and every brick and tile and bluestone here reveals the thickness left by history.

How to inherit the memory of the city while realizing the revival of the historical old street is a proposition that city builders are exploring. A year ago, on August 30, in front of a blue LED background board printed with the "Signing Ceremony of the Strategic Cooperation Framework Agreement", Wu Guoping, chairman of Nianhuawan Cultural Tourism, signed a contract.

The cooperation between this state-owned cultural tourism enterprise in Wuxi and Taizhou was once interpreted as "the most beautiful cultural scenery meets the most aesthetic people", and Yelan Old Street, Dachen Island and Huangjiao Baisha Island are the first to be promoted as key projects.

Yelan Old Street is mainly composed of Laojie South Square, Phase I and Phase II blocks, with a total land area of 17.71 hectares, and this time it is officially opened to the South Square and phase I Pilot Zone, covering an area of about 30,000 square meters.

An old street represents the historical context of a city, and how to interpret it in a modern way and disseminate it to the public is the primary consideration of Nianhuawan Cultural Tourism when it takes over the Yelan Old Street project.

After excavating the local culture and historical traceability of Taizhou, Nianhuawan Cultural Tourism finally took the marine culture as the base and the Taizhou-style sea trade culture characterized by the mountain and sea civilization, and revived the old street with two major strategies of innovative and differentiated interpretation and interpretation through innovative and differentiated interpretation and interpretation.

For example, in terms of architecture, Nianhuawan Cultural Tourism adheres to the concept of inheriting the characteristics of local architectural culture and continuing the living style of local residents, and on the basis of respecting the existing architectural texture and traditional spatial characteristics, it preserves the authenticity and integrity of the original style plots as much as possible, so as to ensure that each hutong has a taste, each corner has a scenery, and each courtyard has characteristics.

"In the process of updating Yelan Old Street, we used a lot of brick carvings, many architectural innovations, and cultural elements. But these are not the most important, the biggest hit of the YeLan project is the second phase, this inheritance and innovation can be seen at that time, it is an extension from ancient times to the present, and now the South Square is like a starting point, but the beauty of Ye Lan is that this street is all gone. Chen Qi, co-general manager of Nianhuawan Cultural Tourism, told Times Finance.

For Nianhuawan Cultural Tourism, the revival of Yelan Old Street is obviously not a simple reconstruction of "repairing the old as old", behind it is the "boutique" thinking that permeates its bones. In Chen Qi's words, "We never advocate shoddy fabrication, but simple imitation and reproduction." ”

"The cultural tourism industry is very difficult to do. It's hard to do particularly well, it's not easy to be able to operate sustainably, and there always seems to be a mystery between investment and return. From the experience of Nianhuawan Cultural Tourism itself, we accept the reality that we should not make the development model of achieving lasting business benefits through long-term operation into a fast turnover. In my opinion, every industry is different, cultural tourism projects are slow, long-term, sustainable, we have to follow the law to do. ”

To become the industry 'Tesla'

Deeply rooted in cultural tourism, but never use cultural tourism to frame and limit themselves, in Wu Guoping's vision, the goal of Nianhuawan Cultural Tourism is to become the "Tesla" of the industry, with strong innovation and discourse power, but not afraid of challenges.

Operators, integrators and service providers are the positioning of Nianhuawan Cultural Tourism, and its business covers the planning, planning, design, construction and operation of cultural tourism projects. In the past three years, it has provided services for dozens of cultural tourism projects in China.

In the past year, Nianhuawan Cultural Tourism achieved a total revenue of 1.238 billion yuan, an increase of 44.5% year-on-year, a net profit of 73.7 million yuan, a contract of 1.343 billion yuan for scenic spot development business, an increase of 120% year-on-year, and newly signed wuxi, Nanjing, Yili, Taizhou, Zibo and so on.

Wu Guoping set the tone for 2022 as a new starting point for the "secondary entrepreneurship" of Nianhuawan Cultural Tourism, and the route he described was "the combination of light and heavy, cross-border integration, combination of size, integration of resources, coincidence of virtual reality, and harmony of public relations". Next, Nianhuawan Cultural Tourism will focus on breaking through the "small and medium-sized micro" Nianhuawan project to create new explosive products; accelerate the landing of "Cultural Tourism +".

Nianhuawan Cultural Tourism and its helmsman have never been "old-fashioned people", they continue to innovate and add in the ups and downs of the cultural tourism industry. Wu Guoping, who entered the industry in 1994 and is also the chairman of Wuxi Lingshan Cultural Tourism Group, under his control, Wuxi Lingshan Scenic Area has become a Buddhist spiritual mountain.

Prior to the site selection and development of Nianhuawan Town, Lingshan Resort, a single core scenic spot of Lingshan Group, has undergone three phases of iteration of tourism core attractions. The 88-meter Lingshan Giant Buddha in the first phase, the Kowloon Bathing in the second phase, and the Sanskrit Palace in the third phase have continuously improved the sightseeing experience of Buddha, Dharma and monks in the Lingshan Resort.

It is in the process of operation and upgrading of the core scenic spots that Lingshan Group realized that the periodic renewal of the core tourism attractions will be the foundation for the cultural tourism scenic spots to maintain their evergreen foundation, which has also become the background of the birth of Nianhuawan Town and created another tourism boutique.

Accelerating the landing of "Cultural Tourism +" will become a key point of the Nianhuawan Cultural Tourism." We will use cultural tourism as the background and platform to build other industries, such as health, entertainment and education industries, to build channels for iteration and innovation, and to do more spiritual products. Chen Qi said bluntly.

At present, the Nishan Sacred Land Luyuan Town, which practices "cultural tourism + education" in Nianhuawan Cultural Tourism, is already under construction, and the project takes "China's first town of research and learning" as the overall positioning, focusing on the development of research and study, education and training, tourism and performing arts, cultural and creative development and other industries. At the same time, it will build a boutique project in Lishui that integrates Chinese traditional Chinese medicine culture with cultural tourism town - Lishui Wuxiangshan National Medical Cultural Tourism Project.

"We are also doing some reforms now, changing and innovating the enterprise mechanism, so we are still in the entrepreneurial stage, the chairman is now taking us to start a second business, the first 30 years we are doing cultural tourism, the last 30 years, we are doing this thing to go beyond this concept."