The "Tourism Thirty" forum recommended industry reading materials, and The latest knowledge achievement of Hua Gaolais, "Tourism in the Next Ten Years", was officially published! In order to facilitate everyone's reading, the Hua Gao Les [Cultural Tourism Lookout] column officially launched the online version!
Different from the previous "Case" release of "Cultural Tourism Lookout", "Tourism in the Next Decade" will systematically expound the development trend of the frontier of tourism for China's domestic tourism, aiming to "answer questions" for tourism industry insiders. This book will systematically expound the challenges and opportunities faced by the tourism industry from multiple dimensions such as the development of tourism itself and the higher dimensions - the process of social development, the shaping of consumption patterns by scientific and technological development, and systematically expound how the tourism industry can achieve "paradigm transformation" in four chapters: "New Resource View", "New Communication Concept", "New Customer Dimension" and "New Time and Space View". Finally, it will show readers the new trends in the future development of China's tourism.
Bibliography of Tourism for the Next Decade
Opening The era of the new resource concept of low-hanging fruit is over
1. The era of low-hanging fruit is over – how should we plan for tourism in the next decade?
Chapter 1: The New Resource View
2. What else can be used for tourism in the next decade?
3. Weak resources, how to seize the brain of tourists?
4. In the era of cultural tourism, will you tell stories?
5. What kind of beauty is needed for the future of agrotourism development?
6. Is it an advantage to be close to the city?
7. Attractions and supporting facilities, who is more important?
Chapter 2: The New View of Communication
8. What will tourism rely on in the next decade?
9. How long does a slogan live?
10. Do we still need travel posters?
11. Does tourism marketing still need a "big V"?
12. Why is IP the hardest thing to do in travel communication?
Chapter 3: New Customer Dimensions
13. How to "capture" customers in the next decade?
14. Interest fanatics
15. Knowledge Pioneer
16. Nostalgic of the times
17. Self-indulgent
Chapter 4: A New View of Space-Time
18. What will a successful destination look like in the next decade?
19. In the night tour, what is a good "show"?
20. Does it need to be balanced between the high season and the low season of the tourist destination?
21. Will the "global" development of tourist destinations become obsolete?
Author 丨 Li Zhipeng, Director of Hua Gao Les General Manager of Industrial Consulting Division
"Only by being extraordinary can we get attention." —German social and cultural scientist Andreas Lekwitz
First, cross the door of life and death
With the continuous introduction of encouraging policies, China's tourism market has become a red sea of competition. According to the "Statistical Handbook of China's A-class Tourist Attractions" (2017 and 2018) data (1), the number of A-class tourist attractions in China increased by 38% from 2016 to 2018, which has exceeded 36% of the total number of tourists; in 2018, the average reception volume of scenic spots has declined, and as an important sector in the field of consumption, the supply of tourism resources in the future will remain high-intensity. According to the statistics of China Tourism News in March 2020, the total number of cultural tourism projects under construction in Zhejiang Province alone has exceeded 3,000. Due to the continuous enhancement of China's national mobility and information acquisition capabilities, the characteristics of the buyer's market of Chinese tourism are bound to become clearer and clearer in the future. The huge non-first-line tourism resources (that is, weak resources in the market) are bound to face a more serious "death" threat.
Tourism competition, many times, let tourists from the uncertainty of where to go to the definite competition. Weak resources can be inspired by the "cognitive closure needs" proposed by american psychologist Arie Kruglanski in the 1990s. This psychological concept means "the strong desire of individuals for deterministic answers when dealing with uncertain situations", which is divided into two stages: first in the mix of information, tension will drive us to make quick decisions and knots; and then we will solidify this knowledge under the permanent drive, maintaining a state of knots, so that weak tourism resources can stay for a long time as long as they can successfully enter the brain of tourists in a short period of time, and bring themselves a wider and more stable potential customer base. Securing vitality in the tourism market.
As early as 1980, AL Ries and Jack Trout offered the most concise and effective strategy in the book Positioning: "The shortcut to people's brains is to be the first." (2) Because of the "head effect" and the biological "imprint effect" (i.e., the fact that a small animal can forever imprint the image of its mother in its head within a few seconds of birth), the first or only one can often become the equivalent of this type, this product, thus occupying an increasingly hasty finite brain. This is exactly what the tourism market is. The widely known "world's first leaning tower" - the Leaning Tower of Pisa is full of tourists and has become synonymous with the Leaning Tower. What other leaning towers are there? Who cares! The Leshan Giant Buddha is well known as the largest stone statue (71 meters high) in China, but China's second stone carved Buddha statue, the Giant Buddha in Gongrong County, is relatively unknown. They all look at the Big Buddha, why go see the second?
Competing for the first place in the minds of tourists in tourism has always been the case, and the converging social consensus in the minds of tourists has made vulnerable resources less beneficial, but the Internet is bringing unimaginable super opportunities to China's huge vulnerable tourism resources, helping them to cross the door of life and death in the digital age by creating "their own", "first" or "unique". The 44th Statistical Report on the Development of China's Internet Network shows (3) that as of June 2019, the number of Internet users in China has reached 854 million, and it is still rising rapidly at a rate of 40 million to 50 million per year; compared with June 2009 10 years ago, this figure was only 338 million. It is foreseeable that in the next decade, with the popularity of the Internet, China's digital age will fully arrive.
Source: CNNIC Statistical Survey on the Development of China's Internet Network
As a huge shared platform for real-time interpersonal communication, the Internet has begun to reshape the concept of "consensus" in the hearts of a new generation of tourists - a young group of young people who are not alone, and gradually no longer stick to the traditional common cognition. The spiritual resonance between peers and the subculture explosion formed by the amplification of the network will become a new base point for future tourism.
This sign is now evident in the ACGN [Animation (Animation), Comic (Manga), Game (Novel), Novel (Novel) enthusiasts triggered the "Holy Land Tour", which attracts about 1.5 million foreign tourists to Japan every year (4), but most of these tourist destinations that are regarded as holy places by the "Two-Dimensional Youth" are traditionally unknown areas. As the main group of tourism consumption, we are using the new "consensus" to empower those former "weak tourism resources", so that these weak tourist destinations can also revitalize the local economy. The trickle caused by intergenerational changes is forming a flood wave of rivers and seas. In the next decade, national landmark tourism for all ages is likely to degenerate into a broader category of tourism behavior. Filling more space in the future market is the new tourist destination that has been re-examined and screened by large and small circles. The diversification of evaluation criteria will bring super opportunities in the digital age to create a "first" or "only" for a large number of vulnerable tourism resources.
Of course, super opportunities also hide huge risks. In the past, the evaluation standard was single and the first was limited, if there was really no time and energy to go, it was okay to go to a similar place in the surrounding area first, but in the case of diversified evaluation standards, the tourist destination must strive to be "first" or "only" in a certain aspect, providing the ultimate experience with hardcore competitiveness. The logic of a series of tourism products that seem to be a "complete system" but is actually "mediocre" will inevitably be crushed under the massive "high stimulation impact" of the Internet, thus losing its appeal to young people.
In the digital age, "first" or "only" is the key to grabbing the brains of tourists. In this case, it can even be said that any tourist destination that only talks about quality and does not talk about the ultimate will inevitably lead to death. In the next decade, only by cleverly defining and strongly building weak tourism resources can we truly cross the door of life and death in the digital age by becoming the "first" or "only" in the hearts of the young generation of tourists.
Second, the method of successfully breaking the game
After years of development, the first-line tourism resources in the traditional consensus have been in a stable position, and the challenges of sharing the stage are difficult and almost impossible. In the next decade, how to break the situation when weak tourism resources create the "first" or "only"?
1) Reshape tourism resources and change to a new coordinate suitable for yourself
For vulnerable tourism resources with certain characteristics, finding a pond where they can make big fish is the key to surviving, or even living better. If you can't become the first in the field, you must be the first in the category; if you can't become the first in the category, you must be the first in the region. This classic strategy has proven its success in the traditional travel market. For example, Hukou Waterfall ranks second largest waterfall in China, but the juxtaposition is "the world's largest yellow waterfall", a yellow definition, it has achieved the world's first, earned enough eyeballs, and the king of this game is the champion of the theme park industry - Disney. While they all offer basically standardized products, each of the six parks has a world-class first or only one to spread: Disneyland Los Angeles is the world's first Disneyland, Shanghai Disneyland is the first Chinese mainland; Disneylando is the largest in the world, Hong Kong is the smallest in the world; Paris is the only one in Europe, and Tokyo has the world's only marine theme.
Shanghai Disneyland, image source: 1/6 picture studio
The resource-oriented logic of "what to sell and what to sell" obviously cannot fully support the determination of all ordinary tourist destinations to develop in the next decade. Many non-first-line tourism resources must turn to the wide circle needs of young tourists in the digital age, combine their own characteristics, aim at the seed customer base, achieve "what to sell", reshape resources with people-oriented logic, and resonate, in order to cross the sea, each becoming the "first" or "only" in the minds of a type of tourist.
For example, Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro, although the world's highest ranking is thousands of miles away, because it is the highest peak in Africa, it also attracts a small number of extreme climbers to complete the summit challenge, but it is difficult for tourists of this scale to support the development of the regional tourism industry, so from the earliest time dating back to 2001, tanzania's embassies abroad have called it "the Highest Walkable Summit in" for the European and American outdoor circles The World" (5), which for a time attracted a large number of mountaineers and even hiking tourists, successfully transformed into a niche tourist destination, and now has more than 25,000 tourists a year (6). In marketing, this is called "expanding the niche."
Mount Kilimanjaro, Image credit: pixabay
In fact, the circle of the younger generation of tourists is very powerful. Even with a certain type of emotion as the core, through the transformation of extreme resources, it can produce an extraordinary "stone into gold" effect. Hokkaido,Japan's "Happiness Station" is a station abandoned in 1987 and is located in an inconvenient place 3 hours' drive from the big city of Sapporo, but with the help of a warm place name and the song "From the Land of Love to Happiness" by female singer Yoko Seri, through the reserved two carriages, waiting rooms and surrounding shops, and the renewal completed in 2013 around the theme of "happiness", The station has become Japan's first lovers' shrine (Lovers No.1) (7) that is highly regarded by young couples, attracting about 240,000 domestic and foreign tourists in 2017 (8), more than the population of about 170,000 in the nearby small city of Obihiro.
"Happiness Station" in Hokkaido, Japan, Image source: Wikimedia@Captain76
2) Leverage alternative resources to find a new opportunity that is different
Each place has its own comparative advantages, but if the core tourism resources are really insufficient and it is difficult to cope with the fierce competition in the future, it is necessary to consider how to transform other advantageous resources and customize the "first" or "only" in the hearts of young tourists. Among them, the most certain kind of tourism resource expansion is scientific and technological resources.
As the decisive role of science and technology in promoting the economy and society continues to emerge, national consciousness and interest will gradually be "scientific and technological". According to the "2018 Main Results of the Survey on the Scientific Quality of Chinese Citizens" (9), in 2018, the proportion of Chinese citizens with scientific quality increased by 2.27%, an increase of 36.6% over 2015, with a faster growth rate; and among various news topics, the interest of Chinese citizens in cutting-edge scientific and technological news topics is also high, of which the proportion of interest in new scientific discoveries, new inventions, new technologies, and new advances in medicine can reach 77.3%, 76.4% and 72.6% respectively. This means that in the next decade, China's scientific and technological citizen group will rise tremendously. The report also pointed out that in 2018, the proportion of citizens aged 18 to 29 with scientific quality reached 16.91%, an increase of more than 5 percentage points over 2015. It can be seen that the young generation of tourists and the group of scientific and technological citizens are highly overlapping, so in the next decade, high-tech science tourism that integrates leisure and entertainment with understanding of scientific and technological knowledge will surely form a new blue ocean in the tourism market.
The overall strategy of an innovative country and the great power game unfolding on a global scale will make China's scientific and technological space distribution more extensive, and bring great opportunities for the construction of high-tech science tourism destinations. Large scientific installations, such as scattered layouts, will provide a new tourism engine for the seemingly inaccessible areas around them. In Pingtang County, Guizhou Province, a small remote mountainous county that can be reached by car in the fastest two and a half hours from Guiyang City, the astronomical town built by "China Sky Eye" FAST has received 800,000 visitors in 2018. In 2019, according to the statistics of the local tourism department, more than 30 research teams alone visited every day in the summer, and thousands of student visitors reached (10). A unique world-class astronomical tourism area is taking shape. The development of cutting-edge technology has also brought about the growth of experiential experimental space, which has formed a new hot resource for popular science tourism, such as the world's first AI (artificial intelligence) technology theme park opened in November 2018 - Haidian Park in Beijing, which served 100,000 tourists in less than two weeks after opening, becoming a new Internet celebrity punch card in Haidian.
China Sky Eye, image source: gzpt.gov.cn
At the same time, the rise of the knowledge economy has made the industrial technology density, including manufacturing, more and more dense. The use of advantageous industrial resources to carry out various types of research and study tourism will also become a possible point for tourism to create the "first" or "only". On January 8, 2020, the press conference of the sixth session of the 16th People's Congress of Haidian District, Beijing announced that in 2020, Haidian District will build a "Youth Zhongguancun Tourism" brand, and high-tech enterprises such as Xiaomi and Huawei and related institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences will be able to make an appointment to visit, and invite entrepreneurs and academicians to explain (11). At this point, Zhongguancun, the country's top innovation zone, will also become a new engine of tourism.
3) Compete for external resources and grab a new gold mine that no one notices
"The world's martial arts, only fast is not broken." If all the resources of an ordinary tourist destination have not established a great advantage, then it can only quickly seize a portable magnetic pole resource in China in the short term, so as to become the "first" or "only" in the region.
But the competition for limited intellectual property (IP) under the traditional consensus is actually too difficult. On the one hand, the common "low-hanging fruit" has long been harvested; on the other hand, the cruelty of this scramble war is also difficult to accept. For example, Rovaniemi, Finland, which competes for the "hometown of Santa Claus". In the case of the Finnish National Tourism Board and the provincial government that jointly formulated the "Santa Claus Hometown Plan" for them very early on and also created their own special tourist attraction Santa Claus Village, it still worked hard for 10 years to obtain the "semi-official recognition" of the United Nations in 1995 (received a letter from the then UN Secretary-General Gurry to Santa Claus), standing out from the fierce competition in many cities in the five Nordic countries.
Rovaniemi Santa Claus Village, Image source: 1/6 picture studio
Since it is so difficult to grab the "common fruit", the large and small circles activated by the Internet give new opportunities to ordinary tourist destinations. The "unique fruit" of a certain circle will become a more valuable new target for the next decade, so introducing the right external resources to what kind of circle among young people will become the core of this strategy.
There are unique fruits, some of which can be picked from outside the wall. This is the fruit of ripe resources that face the same circle and are internationally proven. For example, the rising Kidult (derived from the British in 1985, meaning "grown up") group, its favorite cute style, makes some international small and medium-sized cartoon theme parks extremely valuable. To this end, Anji County, Zhejiang Province, was the first to introduce The Hangzhou Hello Kitty Park (hereinafter referred to as "Paradise"), which is loved by "girlish heart" tourists, which attracted nearly one million tourists for this small town located in the mountainous area of northern Zhejiang. According to statistics, from the official opening of the park on July 1, 2015 to the end of November 2018, in less than three years, it has received nearly 2.8 million visitors (12), becoming an important tourist business card of Anji County in the Yangtze River Delta.
There are also some unique fruits that need to be cultivated by themselves. Whoever can be the first in China to combine their own resources with the emerging circle layer will have a large enough first-mover advantage in this circle to become the center of their future tourism. For example, Wanning City, Hainan Province, in the eyes of ordinary tourists, its beach quality is certainly not as good as Yalong Bay, the waves are large and not suitable for swimming, but Wanning City has seized the niche tourism circle of "surfing" and become the earliest city in China to successfully carry out surfing sports, and has gradually formed a unique and powerful appeal in the surf tourism circle in the world.
In 2010, at the beginning of the budding of domestic surfing, Wanning City held the first International Surf festival, and through a small number of foreign tourists, squeezed into the international surfing circle vision. In 2011, in order to further promote the development of the surfing industry, Wanning City created "China's largest and the world's second largest surf club" - Riyue Bay Surf Club. In the same year, the Wanning Municipal Government worked hard to introduce the World Professional Surfing Association (ASP) and the International Surfing Association (ISA), two of the world's surfing authorities, to introduce the boutique events, making Wanning a world-famous surfing resort. In 2018, surfing projects brought about 30,000 domestic and foreign tourists to Wanning City, and this number is still growing rapidly (13). As surfing entered the Olympic Games, the newly formed national surf team also took root in Wanning. A world-class destination of "surf + travel" has emerged.
Wanning, a thousand people sailing in Shimei, image source: wanning.hainan.gov.cn
Of course, it is particularly noteworthy that in order to be "first" or "only", tourist destinations also need to avoid some other risks. Article 9 of the Advertising Law of the People's Republic of China, which was amended in April 2015, states that the terms "national level", "highest level" and "best" (14) must not be used in advertisements, so advertisements in tourist destinations must use vocabulary carefully, and on the premise of not violating the law, either issue certificates given by relevant authoritative organizations to confirm a certain type of "first" or "unique" identity, or use opinion leaders in the Internet circle to disseminate them through non-advertising forms. After all, the "Small Group Effect" mentioned that according to the observation of NetEase's cross-border e-commerce business department, as long as it can affect 15% of people, a large community will be affected (15).
In the words of androyal Andreas Reckwitz, a German social and cultural scientist and author of The Society of the One-Sex, "[The subject] is in an all-encompassing attractive market where visibility is contested." Only by being extraordinary can we gain attention. ”⑯
The digital age has brought a development feast to many vulnerable tourism resources, but the premise of enjoying the feast is to squeeze into the table first.
Resources
(1) Department of Resources Development, Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the People's Republic of China, Tourism Research and Planning Design Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences: Statistical Overview of China's A-class Tourist Attractions (2017, 2018), China Tourism Publishing House, 2019.
(2) [United States] Ai Rees and Jack Trout: Positioning, translated by Wang Enmian and Yu Shaowei, China Financial and Economic Publishing House, 2002, p. 21.
(3) Office of the Cyber Security and Informatization Commission of the Cpc Central Committee, State Internet Information Office of the People's Republic of China, China Internet Network Information Center: The 44th Statistical Report on the Development of China's Internet Network, August 2019.
(4) Japan Government Tourism Agency: Report on Consumption Trends of Foreigners Visiting Japan (2018).
⑤ The Embassy of the United Republic of Tanzania in Rome，Republic of Italy，Kilimanjaro.
(6) Wu Lu, Zhao Jun, "Kilimanjaro's Porter," Southern People Weekly, No. 564, August 23, 2018.
(7) "Lover's Sanctuary No.1" http://obikan.jp/page-6551/page-6430.
(8) Hokkaido Tokachi General Promotion Bureau, Ministry of Industry, Industry, Labor and Tourism Division: "Annual Number of Tourists in Heisei 29 Years"
(9) Office for the Implementation of the Outline of National Scientific Quality, China Institute of Science Popularization, Main Results of the 2018 Survey on the Scientific Quality of Chinese Citizens, 2018.
(10) Li Xiaoya: "Astronomical Town Ushers in a Tourism Boom", Xinhua Net, July 25, 2019.
(11) Yu Lishuang, "Building the Brand of "Youth Zhongguancun Tourism"", Beijing Daily, January 9, 2020.
(12) "Hangzhou Hello Kitty Park", China Travel News Network, http://www.ctnews.com.cn/art/2018/12/25/art_448_31370.html.
(13) Yuan Yu, Wu Xiaojing, "How the Wanning Surfing Industry Stepped on the Cusp of the Waves," Hainan Daily, December 22, 2018.
(14) Advertising Law of the People's Republic of China
(15) Xu Zhibin, "The Small Group Effect", CITIC Publishing Group, 2017 Electronic Edition, p. 2475.
(16) [de] Andreas Lakewitz, "Heterogeneous Society: The Structural Transformation of Modern Times", translated by Gong Jie, Social Sciences Literature Press, 2019 edition, p. 10.
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