Which one is stronger in the land of Internet celebrities? Qingming Festival has become a testing ground. According to the data center of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, emerging tourist destinations have become new hot spots during the Qingming holiday, and the destination cities with an increase of more than 50% in tourist volume are Tai'an, Zibo, Tianshui, Kaifeng and Jingdezhen. Among them, Gansu Tianshui, which has recently been out of the circle due to spicy hot spots, continues to be "hot and hot", and the number of tourism orders has increased by more than 21 times year-on-year;
According to the data released by the Gansu Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism, during the three days of the Qingming holiday, Tianshui City (2 districts and 5 counties) received a total of 946,500 tourists and achieved a comprehensive tourism income of 540 million yuan. Among them, on April 5, it received 348,600 tourists, setting a new high this year. Douyin life service data shows that during the 3-day Qingming holiday, Tianshui City's wine and tourism orders increased by 89.3% month-on-month.
"Zibo barbecue" has become popular again
It is reported that since the temperature has risen in spring, the passenger flow of the eight major markets has continued to rise, and the daily passenger flow on weekdays and weekends has reached 80,000 people, and the daily passenger flow during the holiday has reached 100,000 people. Douyin Life Service data shows that in the past month (March 7 to April 7), barbecue orders in Zibo City increased by 125% month-on-month.
Data is a direct measure of popularity. These Internet celebrity cities have retained traffic, caught the wealth, and withstood the test. Behind them is a new trend of cultural tourism, as well as the popular path of a place in the era of short videos.
1. The new trend of cultural tourism sinking
After the sky was over, more people found that this prefecture-level city in the northwest was a fifth-tier city with a population of less than 3 million and a GDP of only more than 80 billion yuan. Its urban areas are long and narrow, and most of the population is spread over vast rural areas. However, there are 42 A-level tourist attractions here, including the Maijishan Grottoes, the "fourth largest grotto in China".
In recent years, from the thunderous "Internet celebrity capitals" such as Xi'an and Hangzhou, to the once wide "red cities" such as Zibo and Harbin, and then to obscure small cities such as Tianshui, network traffic is like a flourishing tree, penetrating into cities and villages with countless branches, just like blood flowing to capillaries. The current development of cultural tourism shows a clear downward trend.
Especially in the Internet celebrity cities in the past two years, we can see a common denominator: starting from social networks, falling into the beauty of food and beauty, and being loyal to sincere service.
Everyone has a smartphone, takes photos and videos at any time, and uploads them to the network for sharing in minutes...... These trickles hidden in the fingertips of countless people, once there is a clear flow direction, can converge into a majestic and turbulent "sea of flow". Some analysts say that without algorithms, there will be no "Tianshui out of the circle". Algorithm recommendation is "ordinary people recommend to ordinary people", "ordinary people listen to ordinary people's persuasion", "ordinary people recommend ordinary places", so that places like Tianshui, Zibo and Litang have a chance to get out of the circle.
According to the "Douyin 2024 Rural Cultural Tourism Data Report", in the past year, the Douyin platform has produced more than 459 million rural content, with nearly 2.8 trillion new rural content playbacks, and rural content has received more than 41.5 billion likes, 5.8 billion comments, and 2.805 billion shares. These data are all objective witnesses of the sinking of the traffic. Specific to the field of cultural tourism, there are currently more than 170,000 rural cultural tourism check-in locations on Douyin, with a total of more than 70 million check-in content.
In the wave of traffic sinking, Liuba is a county town that "walks out of the mountains" in the depths of the Qinling Mountains. Located in Hanzhong City, Shaanxi Province, the county has a built-up area of only 1.3 square kilometers and a permanent population of more than 10,000 people. Last year, local homestay merchants converted transactions through short videos and live broadcasts, and compared with June, the payment increased by more than 3 times month-on-month.
In Dongbi Village, Sansha Town, Xiapu County, Fujian Province, a young returnee led a small fishing village to embark on the road of transformation to open a homestay. The village invited the design team to integrate the elements of mountains and seas, sunsets, and tidal flats to create an Internet celebrity characteristic homestay, forming a "one village, one characteristic, one family, one theme" homestay industry belt. After training, 30 local homestays launched group purchases on the short video platform, and a live broadcast of homestays brought sales of up to 170,000 yuan. Subsequently, hundreds of thousands of young people who "reverse tourism" directly set this small fishing village on fire.
2. "Lens" opens up new worlds and new possibilities
More and more counties and villages are seen under the camera, which is the starting point of the story. Only when it is seen, can it generate curiosity and transactions in the outside world, activate the consumer market, drive the development of more industries such as cultural tourism and agricultural products, and let the county and villages truly integrate into the network and mainstream society.
It is hard to imagine how small places such as Tianshui, Rongjiang, Mohe, Liuba County, and Dongbi Village must work hard to gain such a large voice in the era of no social media. Enabling tools to open up new worlds to these small places.
Of course, this is also an opportunity for us to get close to those rural cultural tourism creators in the mountains from outside the camera. In them, we not only see the value of social platforms to help farmers, but also the power of young people to chase their dreams. A closer look at the popularity of each place, especially in the previously unknown rural areas, is inseparable from the driving effect of cultural tourism experts and store explorers.
For example, Xiaozhuang (Zhuang Daohai), a tour guide of Putuo Mountain, told the scenery and stories of Putuo Mountain to the camera during the epidemic, and unexpectedly completed a "digital" transformation. In August 2020, he sent out an invitation to a group for the first time on a short video platform, thinking that only five or six people could come, but 24 people signed up, which made him see the power of the platform. As a result, Xiaozhuang has started a new life of "anchor + tour guide", and has received more than 100,000 tourists from online in the past four years.
According to statistics, in the past year, Douyin has added nearly 19,000 travel influencers with more than 10,000 followers. These creators and cultural tourism businesses rooted in the countryside and county use short videos and live broadcast tools to tell their own stories and record real life, forming the mainstay of each small place to stretch outward through the Internet.
Of course, there are hundreds of millions of ordinary users, who hold up their mobile phones to record, discover, and discover, and a casual sharing may bring fire to a city, a scenic spot, or a small thing. This is the basic plate of cultural tourism.
In addition, the sinking of cultural tourism is also related to the fact that young people are keen on "reverse tourism" to a certain extent. The more well-known the big place and famous scenic spots, the more people, the more congested the traffic, and the more commercial the consumer market, and the more unknown the small place, the more it retains some of the original ecological interest, the easier the trip is, and the stronger the sense of gain. This is also the internal logic of the sudden popularity of some small places at the moment.
There are always young people looking for the "next one", and more places are constantly coming to the fore.
3. The "lethality" of local marketing formulas and memory points
If there is a formula for city/local marketing, then "content production + algorithm recommendation + interaction out of the circle" must be counted as one. This value chain is constantly recording, recommending, and discovering content such as "life fireworks" and "offline eating, drinking, and playing", which has led to netizens participating in discussions, punching cards and re-creations, and the previously undiscovered "beautiful experience" has been excavated more, forming a deep sinking, infinite loop of traffic closed loop.
If you want to do a good job, you must first sharpen your tools. Social platforms, especially short video platforms, through technological innovation and content delivery, can not only express the creativity of new products, new scenes and experiences in the countryside, promote rural culture and tourism consumption, but also shape a new development path of "rural culture + rural tourism + digital economy" that can be replicated, used for reference and promoted.
Phenomenal out-of-the-circle events and cultural and tourism consumption drive require all-round linkage between local governments, enterprises, and the public. All localities and creators dare to touch the Internet, go deep into the Internet, and answer more subjective questions while "copying homework".
At the beginning of the year, when Harbin exploded, @河南文旅 took the lead in launching the "sea of questions tactics" for cultural tourism propaganda and created a "persuasion personality". From January to March 2024, the number of followers increased by 14 times. @如意甘肃 In March, with the hot event of "Gansu Tianshui Malatang", the cumulative number of fans increased by 157,000, an increase of 51%. These riches seem to come from "pouring into the sky", but in fact, there is also a lot of self-effort.
On the one hand, each place can have its own "fifteen minutes". It can be beautiful food, long history and culture, or some kind of craft, festival, event, or even a lifestyle and mood. Just as no two leaves are the same, and no two places are exactly the same, this is where the self-worth of each place lies.
On the other hand, it's also important to recognize that people are tired of parts of the attraction that give a sense of uniformity. When using online platforms to promote their own characteristics, the key is to dig deep into local characteristics and develop their strengths and avoid weaknesses. From the cases of Zibo and Tianshui, it can be found that it is impossible to retain customers for a long time by eating alone, and it is still necessary to mark each place with special memory points based on local characteristics of "eating, drinking, playing, entertainment, shopping" and local culture.
Taking Tianshui as an example, why does a small bowl of spicy tang burst out with such a great appeal? The tendon Q bomb of sweet potato vermicelli, the "color and fragrance" of Gangu chili, and even the emoji of the hot skewer uncle are all subtle but powerful memory points.
Details are the most "lethal", and how to work the details can really test the real kung fu of a place on the eve of the arrival of traffic. The sinking of cultural tourism is both an opportunity and a challenge for the county and rural areas, and it is necessary to follow the trend and understand the trend when we see the trend, and transform experience and laws into the internal driving force for our own development.