Image source @ Visual China
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Recently, the panoramic immersive audio-visual cultural feast "The Supreme Dragon Gate" has been at the forefront of Henan's tourism hot search list, and is still at the top of the list of planting grass in Luoyang Amusement Park, and its operating data has far exceeded expectations. Since the opening of the Spring Festival, the amusement park has received an average of 2,000 people per day, with an average daily income of 65,000 yuan, and reached 120,000 yuan during the peak period, which has become a new landmark of Luoyang city cultural tourism. Nowadays, with the "Supreme Dragon Gate" experience hall out of the circle, immersive cultural tourism has once again entered people's field of vision and become the "new favorite" of the industry.
New way of playing culture and tourism: immersion into the next outlet
At present, the "immersive" experience is quietly sweeping the country, and the colorful experience is emerging in an endless stream: immersive exhibition, immersive performance, immersive live-action script killing, immersive scenic spot... Everything can be immersive, from indoors to outdoors.
For many tourists, interactivity, storytelling and artistic beauty are the most attractive elements of immersive cultural tourism. At present, there are many cultural units, museums, scenic spots, etc. across the country that have combined their own characteristics to design new tricks for immersive experiences. In addition to the recent "Supreme Dragon Gate" experience hall in Luoyang, Wuhan's "Yellow Crane Tower at Night" also focuses on creating immersive story scenes, and "Zhiyin" is hailed as the pinnacle of immersive script killing in relatively closed spaces; The Shanghai immersive stage play "Sleepless Nights" is also recognized by most netizens as the peak of immersive stage dramas; Gansu immersive cultural tourism performance "Le Dong Dunhuang" was once hard to find a ticket...
As "immersive cultural tourism" has become a hot word in the cultural tourism market, it is also inseparable from the technology, policy and other factors behind it:
One is driven by technology. Immersive cultural tourism relies on virtual reality, augmented reality, holographic projection, intelligent interaction and other technologies, combined with tourism culture IP to create a space that combines virtual and real, and the continuous development of AR/VR, artificial intelligence and other technologies makes the sense of interaction, scene and substitution created by immersive entertainment products stronger, and overcomes the environmental restrictions in traditional entertainment products; At the same time, let the people in it interact with cultural works, and even participate in the creation of works, and experience sensory shock and thinking identity.
The second is that the policy is favorable. In recent years, the state has also repeatedly proposed to encourage the development of immersive experience, according to the incomplete collation of Maidian, since 2019-2021, the state has issued 6 immersive experience industry support policies before and after, providing more directions for its future development.
Third, in the consumer market, consumers are increasingly pursuing quality and experiential consumer content. At present, domestic cultural tourism consumption shows a trend of rejuvenation and internationalization, and the aesthetic level and product requirements continue to improve. As an innovative entertainment method, immersive entertainment has outstanding advantages in terms of experience, interactivity and scene sense, and caters to the needs of consumption upgrading.
Driven by these reasons, immersive cultural tourism ushered in a period of rapid development. However, while the concept of "immersion" is heating up rapidly, there are also problems such as the application of related technologies is not in place, the quality of products is not high, and the sense of tourist experience is poor.
Problems abound: resistance to immersive development emerges
As an important vane for the upgrading of the current cultural tourism industry, immersive cultural tourism has countless cultural tourism projects with the gimmick of "immersive experience" for a while. But there are also quite a few problems behind the vast majority of projects. From planning and construction, content creation to operation management, most of them are not reproducible, on the one hand, the investment is huge, the cost is high, and on the other hand, the innovation is weak.
The investment is large and the cost is high
At present, most of the immersive cultural tourism projects on the market are heavy asset types, with large investment and high costs. Taking Shanghai Disney, Fantawild series, and Universal Studios Beijing as an example, these resorts have even become a city symbol, unlike the common A-class scenic spots, the park as a whole is not immersive, but the dome theater and flying theater in the park are very high-quality immersive movie viewing projects.
Looking at the above projects, whether it is Fangte or Universal Studios Beijing, the investment in a single project is more than 10 billion, compared with the big drama "Only Henan Drama Magic City" invested by Henan Jianye Group, which officially claims to invest 6 billion yuan, but the cost is still not low. Immersive cultural tourism projects require the entry of capital and consortiums, which is also doomed to its high threshold and difficult to replicate.
In addition, in the context of the repeated outbreak of the new crown epidemic, large asset investment means higher financial costs, and for scenic spots with investment of tens of billions, the annual interest cost is calculated according to 5%, which is also as much as 500 million. Therefore, how to control costs and achieve profitability is also a problem that immersive theme scenic spots need to seriously consider.
Technology is at the top of the mountain, and the content is on the mountainside
At present, immersive cultural tourism has misunderstandings such as excessive dependence on technology, the pursuit of special effects, and the use of three-dimensional enveloping sensory bombardment for experiencers; At the same time, many projects ignore content elements and entrust the heavy responsibility of creation to non-professionals, resulting in low product quality, and even distorting, tampering and vulgarizing cultural heritage. In addition to the immature application of technology and the neglect of content elements, there are still problems such as over-exploitation in the creation process of immersive cultural tourism products.
Only by making full use of the environmental and technical elements of immersive formats to form high-quality content can we generate long-term and sustainable business value. Scenic spots should also recognize that not all cultural attractions are equipped to carry out immersive tours. If the construction of related facilities of the project affects the safety of cultural relics and destroys the historical landscape, the gains will outweigh the losses.
The concentration of immersive industries is not high
At present, as an emerging industry spanning major fields such as digital media, art, and architecture, the domestic immersive industry has developed rapidly, but there is still great room for development. The industrial concentration is not high, and there are almost no large enterprises with an output value of more than one billion yuan, and it is urgent to cover the entire industrial chain of the upper, middle and lower reaches.
The upstream industry of the immersive industry mainly involves technology fields, including virtual reality technology, augmented reality technology and 3D holographic projection technology. The high unit price of many immersive experience projects is not unrelated to the high cost of upstream technology products.
In addition to cutting-edge technology and equipment, the cost of many stage-necessary technical equipment such as ice screens, screen screens, digital water curtains, stage smoke machines, lighting, and audio will also greatly affect the midstream industry. The downstream industry of the immersive industry is mainly composed of IP parties, commercial real estate, and cultural tourism scenic spots. The data shows that the number of consumers attracted by the cooperation model of cultural tourism scenic spots accounts for 40% of the total number of the three models.
The Cultural Tourism 4.0 Era: Nugget Immersive Experience
With the deepening of China's tourism industry, new eras, new demands, new formats and new characteristics are emerging in an endless stream. Cultural Tourism 4.0 experience the advent of the economic era, and various places have begun to dig for gold "immersion".
Build immersive projects tailored to local conditions
At this stage, the entrants of immersive cultural tourism are becoming more and more numerous, and under the heat, it is inevitable that there will be blind obedience. Therefore, enterprises should keep their minds clear, create immersive projects according to local conditions, and reduce investment costs on the basis of being different.
Taking Luoyang's "Supreme Dragon Gate" as an example, the experience hall is close to the Longmen Grottoes, no special venues have been built, and the original buildings of Longmen Ancient Town have been used to significantly reduce costs, with an indoor span of 21 meters and a height of 12 meters, maximizing the use of the space of the original building.
In the more than one month of opening time, "Supreme Dragon Gate" has a landmark collection of 38,000, 10,000 Douyin ticket reservations, and the most important thing is to have the "Original Life BGM": "The Chinese civilized city of Luoyang reminds you that the next stop is Longmen Station." It is understood that the operating costs of "The Supreme Dragon Gate" are extremely low, and industry insiders predict that according to the current trend, it is predicted that all investment costs can be recovered within 1 year.
Promote a high degree of integration of technology and art
The development of immersive industry should take the mining, experience and value transformation of cultural IP as the core, and prevent the simple display of technology and the sound of optoelectronics from ignoring the cultural connotation and value embodiment. Especially under the trend of "going to tickets" in cultural tourism scenic spots, content and experientiality are of paramount importance to consumers. Therefore, in addition to wonderful technical support, it is also necessary to base on cultural implantation and focus on creating "immersive" boutique IP.
The Grand Canal Immersion Museum of China uses new technologies to revitalize thousand-year-old historical relics and reshape large-scale immersive ancient scenes. Design the interactive experience of "knowledge display + escape room" to allow the audience to obtain a personalized cultural education experience in the fun of the game; Create a 360° multimedia loop theater, so that the audience can fully perceive the vitality of culture in a multi-dimensional space; The original "three-dimensional printmaking" digital media language creates an immersive experience of "people swimming in the painting" through the progressive experience of multiple perspectives.
Third-party cultural and creative and technology companies are out of the circle
With the innovation of technology and content, the presentation forms of immersive cultural tourism are becoming more and more abundant, and the application of the concept of "immersion" in the cultural tourism industry chain is also expanding. Immersion not only brings more development opportunities for the deep integration of the cultural tourism industry, but also prompts many third-party cultural and creative companies and immersive related technology operators to be strong in this track.
At the technical level, scenic spots, amusement parks and other tourist attractions entrust immersive experience designers to design relevant scenic spots for scenic spots. For example, Disney commissioned immersive experience entertainment producers to create a large space for offline multiplayer VR experience; Another example is the support of the Black Bow for the Huaqing Palace Scenic Area to provide an immersive tourism performance program "Long Hate Song".
The planners and producers of the immersive industry are also the largest group that has benefited from the rapid development of this industry. The data shows that with the development of China's immersive experience entertainment industry, the number of related producers has continued to increase; From 5 in 2014 to 266 in 2018, an exponential growth trend.
In addition, in order to ensure the healthy development of the immersive cultural tourism industry, it is necessary for the competent government departments to formulate and issue corresponding guidance rules, make corresponding provisions from the aspects of ideological orientation, creative connotation, approval supervision, and model innovation, and launch high-level experience projects.
epilogue
As a new economic format, the current domestic immersive technology and industry has developed rapidly, and more than 30 kinds of immersive new formats and products have emerged, covering almost all areas of emerging consumption of cultural tourism. The immersive industry represents the further rise of the domestic experience economy and the consumption upgrade of the cultural industry, and also provides a new direction for the integrated development of culture and tourism.