Technological innovation is enabling an immediate response to more and more urgent needs.
The reporter learned on August 16 that in order to improve the tour experience of the scenic spot, enhance its emergency support capabilities and the digital level of daily operation and maintenance, Meituan UAV opened Beijing's first drone delivery route on the Badaling Great Wall, a national AAAAA-level scenic spot. At present, this "air corridor" can provide tourists near the landing site with heatstroke prevention, emergency rescue and other goods delivery services. Since then, Meituan's drone "airdrop" service has covered the four first-tier cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and this is also the first time that a normalized drone delivery service has been opened in Beijing.
▲Meituan UAV Beijing Badaling Great Wall route sailed (photo by Guan Le)
According to reports, the landing point of Beijing's first drone delivery route is located in the South Nine City Tower of the Badaling Great Wall South City Extension, which will be open to the public at the end of 2023. Different from the intact architectural form of the Badaling Great Wall, which has been opened before, this section of the Great Wall retains its remnants after eliminating dangers and diseases, and adopts a small number of small scales, small-scale, reservation system, and collective organization forms, mainly carrying out outdoor hiking, adventure crossing, Great Wall research, travel photography and other activities.
In order to preserve the pristine appearance of the area as much as possible, there are no commercial facilities, but this also requires visitors to walk for at least half an hour to resupply supplies such as drinking water. The recent high temperature weather in Beijing has also significantly increased the transportation demand for emergency supplies such as heatstroke prevention and cooling on the Great Wall.
The complex and diverse potential needs have attracted Meituan drones to launch an "airdrop help" service at the Great Wall: on the premise of meeting the transportation requirements, the drones can help tourists near the landing site buy and deliver urgently needed sunscreen umbrellas, cooling stickers and other heatstroke prevention and cooling materials; Meituan's emergency kit was also set up at the take-off point to provide emergency supplies such as disinfectant, light salt water, and anti-sickness medicine for tourists in need. In addition, at the end of the daily operation time, the drone will transform from a "mountain picker" to a "sanitation worker" to assist the operation and maintenance personnel of the scenic spot to transport nearby waste to the designated recycling location, relieving the daily transportation pressure of the staff under the scorching heat.
Tourists near the landing site can wait for a few minutes to receive sour plum soup, ice cream and other summer goods after a simple operation on their mobile phones, so that tourists can enjoy instant retail services as if they are at home even if they are at the beacon tower, reducing the burden of materials on the journey.
▲Meituan drones are delivering goods to tourists on the Great Wall (photo by Guan Le)
"Safety, convenience and efficiency are typical characteristics of drone delivery, and the value is especially prominent in a complex natural environment such as the Great Wall. Through more and more abundant application scenarios, we also see that the public has high hopes for the development of the low-altitude industry. According to the relevant person in charge of Yanqing District, Beijing, in October 2020, Yanqing District was approved by the Civil Aviation Administration of China as the first batch of "Civil Unmanned Aviation Test Zone" in Beijing, with 374 square kilometers of airspace and a true height of 1,098 meters. At present, Yanqing has taken drones as one of the four major industries to be cultivated in the region, and Beijing's first Zhongguancun low-altitude economic industrial park has also recently landed in Yanqing. In the future, Yanqing will continue to enrich the application scenarios, so that drones can "fly" in six major fields, including ecological monitoring, Great Wall protection, urban logistics, feeder logistics, and cultural tourism experience, and be widely used to achieve good economic and social benefits.
With the continuous expansion of application scenarios, "low-altitude + tourism" stands out. Nowadays in Badaling, in addition to experiencing drone delivery, tourists can also experience aircraft driver's license training; Taking a helicopter or fixed-wing plane overlooking the majesty of the Badaling Great Wall, flying over the rippling blue waters of Wild Duck Lake and Guanting Reservoir is a new way to travel experience. The low-altitude economy is radiating more and more vitality in Yanqing, and more and more innovative ideas are emerging.
▲After the opening of the Badaling route, Meituan's drone delivery service has covered Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen (photo by Guan Le)
Industry experts said: "The combination of low-altitude economy and scenic spots is a typical practice of integrating scientific and technological innovation such as drone delivery into the transformation and upgrading of the cultural and tourism industry, so as to meet the increasingly diversified and high-quality cultural and tourism consumption needs of the current market, effectively help the tourism industry improve quality and efficiency through scientific and technological innovation, and further stimulate the market consumption potential."
"In the future, we hope to cooperate with more new brands and new scenarios, so that everyone can truly enjoy the higher quality consumer experience brought by technology." According to the relevant person in charge of Meituan UAV, up to now, Meituan UAV has opened more than 30 routes in Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other cities, with a total of more than 300,000 orders, and the service can cover various scenarios such as office, community, scenic spots, municipal parks, emergency medical care, campuses, libraries, etc., and provide users with more than 90,000 kinds of commodity choices.
Meituan's drone data also shows that drone delivery services are becoming more popular in parks and scenic spots. During this year's May Day holiday, Meituan's drone routes in many parks and scenic spots continued to "burst orders", and the fastest order only took 7 or 8 minutes. The efficient and novel service experience drove the takeaway orders of some surrounding merchants to increase by more than 300% year-on-year. There are more than 8 percent of takeaway orders from merchants, which are specified by tourists to be sent to the scenic spot by drones.