Everyone says that Jiangnan is good, and tourists only meet Jiangnan Lao.
It's spring again, the poems are still sung in a low voice, and the footsteps of travelers cross the mountains and rivers. Today's people no longer have the concept of "Jiangnan Province" and "Jiangnan Province" of the ancients, and they often forget that Anhui Province also belonged to the administrative division of Jiangnan. In the field of cultural tourism, many people's first feelings about Anhui are the same: they don't know much and are not impressed.
I can't help but ask, what is the development of the tourism market in this "China's most non-existent" province? How does it empower cultural tourism through marketing?
From a tree to a provincial cultural tourism
In March, the wind is harmonious. From online to offline, the spring economy continues to boom.
In line with the season, Alipay Ant Forest has recently launched several themed tree skins, among which the second-ranked "Welcome Pine" has more than 1.7 million exchanges as of the 15th. In the center of the picture, a vigorous green pine stands upright, and at the far end is the outline of the building outlined by the landscape and the black and white horse-head wall. Familiar tourists can blurt out scenic spots such as "Yellow Mountain" and "Hongcun"; Users who don't know much about it can also find clues from the introduction of the skin "Anhui Meichun Appointment, welcoming the world".
Ant Forest skin exchange preview
That is, more than 1 million people, in this spring, saw Anhui through a few square centimeters of mobile phone screens.
The Huai River straddles the north and south, and many people may not pay special attention to this province that is sandwiched between the "integration of the Yangtze River Delta" and the "great development of the central region". Low-key has become a certain urban style and impression, and it is also transmitted to the field of destination marketing. Even in the involution of the national cultural tourism at the beginning of the year, Anhui also showed a restrained and calm appearance. Different from the online carnival of "editing smoking" and "naked men and beautiful women", it still insists on promoting local culture and traditional poetry, and finds another way through "poetic and picturesque".
But behind the subtlety is hidden the silent power of moisturizing things, just past the Qingming holiday, in the good news of cultural tourism flying like cherry blossoms everywhere, Anhui has completed a remarkable achievement:
According to public data, Anhui Province received 20.282 million tourists during the Qingming holiday and achieved tourism revenue of 11.52 billion yuan, an increase of 60.1% and 95.1% year-on-year respectively on a comparable basis. Among the 22 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions that have released tourism data for the Qingming holiday (statistics as of April 9), Anhui ranks first in the country from the above two dimensions.
From the flourishing of a tree on the online platform to the prosperity of a city and a provincial cultural tourism market, why is Anhui "a blockbuster"?
I'm your partner
From an objective point of view, the broad and profound resource endowment and historical accumulation are the foundation on which Anhui's cultural tourism depends. At the natural level, Anhui spans the Yangtze River, Huai River and Xin'an River, with a vertical and horizontal water system, and the three famous mountains of Huangshan, Jiuhua Mountain and Tianzhu Mountain are towering and verdant; At the cultural level, the architectural style of the Hui school is unique, and Hui Studies, together with Dunhuang Studies and Tibetan Studies, is regarded as one of the three major regional cultures in China. Compared with many destinations that can only rely on homogeneous elements such as catering and health care, the base color of Anhui's cultural tourism is undoubtedly more diverse and full.
How to maximize the development and utilization of "God's Appreciation of Rice" is the moment of active initiative.
At the policy level, Anhui undoubtedly has the determination to continue to exert force in the cultural tourism industry. At the recent meeting to promote the construction of world-class leisure and health tourism destinations in Dahuangshan, Zhou Mingjie, director of the Anhui Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism, said that Anhui will benchmark against the world's first-class, strengthen the project-driven, enhance the boutique scenic spots, and promote the construction of Huangshan, Jiuhua Mountain, Tianzhu Mountain, Xidihong Village and Yixian International Rural Tourism Resort into world-class tourist attractions rich in cultural heritage.
Anhui Fuyang Source: Anhui Cultural Tourism Public Account
At the implementation level, in addition to continuously optimizing facilities and services, the role of publicity and marketing in the promotion of cultural tourism is also becoming more and more critical. Looking at the tourist cities out of the circle, whether it is Harbin's "pet guest" or Kaifeng's "Do Not Disturb", they all originated from the "planting" of users on social media platforms, that is, spontaneous publicity with content sharing as the main form. After the first wave of heat fermentation, the takeover of the relevant management departments helped the destination to undertake the traffic and strive to transform to "Changhong". The Gansu Department of Culture and Tourism has publicly stated that it has carried out centralized publicity and promotion around "Gansu Malatang", and has also coordinated multiple online platforms to provide traffic support for related topics.
Similar to the beginning of this year, the marketing of Anhui Cultural Tourism is also "unusual". Pincheng Tourism Observation found that since March, in addition to Alipay, there are many brands and enterprises with different styles and fields, and whose main business is not directly related to tourism, have begun to cooperate with Anhui Cultural Tourism in a unified pace, and join the team to promote cultural tourism in this province.
Sinopec's first car friends festival was launched at Hefei Volkswagen Energy Station, and the participants also unveiled the 2024 "Spring Outing Jianghuai Invites You to Come" publicity and promotion activities, and launched three Anhui self-driving routes;
Kawonka Milk Tea launched 20 Spring Tour JAC theme stores in 15 cities in the province for a limited time, and launched customized co-branded peripherals such as Anhui city postcards and Chunxinzhi theme cup sets;
Kawanka co-branded cup set Source: Anhui Cultural Tourism public account
Xiaomi Anhui Branch held a photo contest with the theme of "Spring Tour to Jianghuai", soliciting original works from the society, including "Spring Flowers, Spring Tea, Spring Flavor, Spring Sleep, Spring Song, Spring Yang, Spring Learning, Spring Market, Spring Song, Spring Travel", etc., and also landed theme film festivals in more than 20 offline stores......
What is the business logic of these seemingly loose marketing activities? Can it really add fuel to the market heat of Anhui cultural tourism?
Pincheng Tourism contacted the relevant person in charge of Anhui Cultural Tourism, according to him, the above-mentioned theme activities are all part of a marketing model known as the "Partner Program".
Partners, organizations and individuals who invest in the formation of partnerships, participate in partnerships. With the help of this concept, the message that Anhui Cultural Tourism tries to convey is also quite direct and clear: packaging local tourism with product thinking, and distributing and selling it with the help of the partner's own platform and resources. It is understood that Anhui Cultural Tourism has been carrying out preliminary project warm-up and partner recruitment since the end of January this year; In March this year, the partner program was officially launched with the spring marketing activity of "Spring Outing to JAC", which was launched.
"Spring Outing Jianghuai invites you to come" activity promotional video Source: Anhui Cultural Tourism
According to the data, since the collection was opened on March 23, Xiaomi's "Spring Tour to Jianghuai" photo contest has received 724 submissions of various kinds, and more than 300 Xiaomi Home offline stores have participated in the dissemination, and the passenger flow during the Qingming holiday has increased by 21%. The 50,000 themed cup sets in the Kawangka theme store were sold out in less than 2 days, and the 4,000 cup sets and 4,000 postcards that were given away as gifts during the Qingming holiday were also distributed, and the related topics of Xiaohongshu users spontaneously punched in exceeded 150,000 views.
Observations from travel platforms also confirm the effectiveness of this model. On Ctrip's search hot word list, Anhui's search popularity has been rising all the way since January, ranking 14th on the platform list in February, and rising to 10th again in March. The change curve of search popularity is highly consistent with the communication rhythm of various marketing events planned by partners, and during the Qingming holiday, these accumulated topics and favorability finally exploded.
It can be said that unlike the Internet celebrity destinations that were swept into the traffic center overnight, Anhui Cultural Tourism can be said to be prepared.
Market demand empowers new marketing
Preparation is not only reflected in the depth and breadth of the partner pool, but also in the analysis and insight of the industry.
Since the beginning of the year, a series of new tourist hotspots have shown that the factors affecting consumer travel are constantly changing, and outdated marketing ideas may encounter bottlenecks. Looking back on the marketing context of Anhui Cultural Tourism, it is not difficult to find that the reason why the "Partner Program" can receive positive and enthusiastic response and feedback from the market is that it conforms to the development trend of the industry and makes corresponding adjustments and changes.
The first is "cross-border".
For consumers, the boundaries of travel behaviour are becoming less angular. In addition to traditional tourism attractions such as landscapes and humanities, they also like to embed content in daily life scenes such as food and social interaction. Whether it's a barbecue, a blind date, or even a homophonic lyric of "I want Disney", these fragmented and detailed elements have the opportunity to become the main motivation for tourists to travel to their destinations.
For destination marketing, the combination and collision of different elements between destinations and partners can reach a wider range of potential consumers and have more opportunities to open up new traffic entrances. For example, cooperating with games to launch offline events and cooperating with artists to hold music festivals are all attempts to jump out of the tourism circle and capture "cross-border" audiences.
Of course, cross-border does not mean that the two sides of the cooperation are illogical and interrelated. Taking the partnership program as an example, it seeks to discover the most suitable marketing scenarios between brands and cultural tourism. From the perspective of the elements of tourism "food, housing, transportation, travel, shopping and entertainment", Kawanka is "eating", Sinopec is "traveling", and Xiaomi is "entertainment"; Several of them are taken under the more macro pan-scene and "big theme" of "Spring Outing to Jianghuai", and the development of marketing activities is more coherent and systematic.
"Spring Outing Jianghuai invites you to come" activity promotional video Source: Anhui Cultural Tourism
The second is "close to the people".
Whether or not to "listen to persuasion" has become an important criterion for netizens to measure whether local cultural tourism has the potential to become popular. The voice of the people is often a true reflection of the pain points of the market, and in the era of mobile Internet where "everyone has a microphone", the formalism of self-talk is untenable.
The person in charge of Anhui Cultural Tourism said that being down-to-earth is also his biggest feeling for the partner plan. In fact, with a single scenic spot or city as the main body, it is already a routine marketing operation to cooperate with celebrities, brands, and other destinations: for example, the implementation of ticket discounts and tourists between scenic spots; The city invites Internet celebrities to live broadcast, celebrity endorsements, etc. However, as a provincial-level cultural and tourism department, it is rare to "lower the profile" and carry out large-scale joint names with enterprises, so it also has considerable "gold content".
According to sharing, some tourists made a special trip across the city just to collect co-branded postcards with the logo of "Anhui Cultural Tourism". In the process, the destination and the target consumer's life are created with a richer and more unique connection.
Accurate customer acquisition, communication is more cost-effective
Insight into market needs is the outpost for a marketing success, and the ultimate test is always the conversion of purchases.
According to the relevant person in charge of Anhui Cultural Tourism, the advantage of the partnership model does not lie in the brightness of the momentary data, but in its pioneering and guaranteed mechanism. First of all, with the help of the mutual promotion of partner traffic channels, it can quickly attract traffic to the destination in a short period of time at a low cost. He used the term "reducing costs and increasing efficiency" to describe this marketing strategy: in the context of shrinking local financial budgets, in the face of the same communication work, the partner plan enables the cultural and tourism sector to achieve considerable communication results without spending too much extra effort;
Secondly, the generation of relevant exposure and sales data is also well-documented and traceable. "Selling 50,000 cup sets is equivalent to selling 50,000 cups of milk tea", the person in charge admitted frankly, and the partner plans to obtain a more efficient market response and drive consumption more directly. With the help of the mutual promotion of the market of local cultural tourism and cooperative enterprises, it has actually promoted the win-win situation of local business economy and cultural tourism income.
"Spring Outing Jianghuai invites you to come" activity promotional video Source: Anhui Cultural Tourism
The keyword "cost performance" is not only reflected in the comparison between the investment resources and the traffic obtained by the partner plan, but also in the complementarity of the needs of both parties. The cross-border scenarios mentioned above are used as the focus to give full play to the multiplier effect of marketing elements to achieve a "1+1>2" situation. The linkage case of Anhui Cultural Tourism and Xiaomi shows how the two brands cooperate for the goal of cost performance through the "coincidence" of the three sets of needs.
In terms of marketing background, Xiaomi's image as a "national enterprise" coincides with Anhui's positioning as a "province with a large population" and a "strong tourism province". Enterprises have received continuous exposure from local consumers, while cultural tourism has benefited from the brand's positive social public opinion and a wide range of user groups. Secondly, Xiaomi's practical and efficient brand orientation coincides with the marketing strategy of Anhui Cultural Tourism. Lei Jun once publicly said, "The premium model has been proven to be a point of no return, and the Xiaomi model must firmly follow the cost-effective model." And finally settled on the event itself, Xiaomi's "professional image flagship" technology coincides with the scenery of Anhui's "beautiful mountains and waters". Taking the photo contest as the starting point, it can not only show the strength of the brand, but also promote the tourism resources of the destination, and at the same time, the implementation of the activity is more concise and clear, so as to better realize "doing big things with little money".
Of course, the partnership program, which has only been online for a month and a half, is by no means perfect. Challenges remain, such as the limited number of partners and the longer cycle required for market transformation. However, in the assumption of the relevant person in charge of Anhui cultural tourism, the partner will be a long-term plan on a year-by-year basis, and it will also go through several stages of iterative updates, step by step towards perfection and maturity:
Version 1.0 focuses on building relationships extensively, launching partner IPs, creating cultural tourism business cards, and selecting partners suitable for long-term cooperation in the process;
Version 2.0, with the deep cultivation of cooperation and distribution, the penetration of cultural and tourism elements in the partner's offline stores has been deepened, and the exposure of cultural tourism content has been strengthened;
Version 3.0 integrates specific product lines, allowing partners to become direct distributors of related tourism products and invest resources in major markets outside the province, such as the Yangtze River Delta, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, and the Greater Bay Area.
Statistics show that by the end of 2023, the permanent population of Anhui Province will reach 61.21 million. Whether it is for cultural tourism or business, this is a market with broad development potential. At the end of the day, people are at the heart of tourism development. Whether it is a company or a destination, the ultimate purpose of marketing is to impress consumers - the travel consumption contributed by one after another fresh individuals has built a huge and brilliant tourism industry, in this sense, everyone is a partner of hometown cultural tourism, and behind every circle marketing, is the joint efforts of the government, enterprises and people.
As for Anhui Province, the smoke and rain of Qingming have not yet drifted away, and the May Day holiday is just around the corner. What is the quality of the partner program? Can low-key destinations once again amaze the nation? At present, what I am most looking forward to is naturally the answer given by the market.
Source: Pincheng Tourism
#趣游安徽 ##共进安徽#