The air is fading. Looking back on this particularly hot summer, how is the performance of the “water charm Jiangsu” cultural tourism market?
On the evening of September 4, the big data monitoring report of Jiangsu tourism in summer was released. During the period from July 1 to August 31 this year, the provincial A-level scenic spots and rural tourism spots received 101 million tourists, and the total tourism consumption was 35.15 billion yuan, which reached 85.26% and 88.61% respectively in the same period of 2021 according to the comparable caliber, and rose 19.32% and 16.08% respectively from May to June, including May Day and Dragon Boat Festival holidays.
Under the influence of the spread of epidemic in many places, the data of “year-on-year decline and month-on-month surge” means that all parts of Jiangsu seize the market opportunities in the tourist season, fully carry out cultural and tourism marketing activities, enrich cultural and tourism product formats, create a number of new consumption scenes and other highlights in the process of promoting the rapid recovery of the summer culture and tourism market, and also leave room for further transformation and upgrading.
The recovery of cultural tourism market in summer has accelerated, and the epidemic has become the “X factor” of summer tourism
Summer is the “peak season” of the culture and tourism market in a year. According to the data, the recovery of Jiangsu’s cultural and tourism market this summer has run out of “acceleration” – in July, cultural and tourism activities across Jiangsu are still getting better, and it is hard to find a room for high-star hotels, resorts and boutique home stays. In August, the popularity of the cultural tourism market has not decreased. The total number of tourists received by the A-level scenic spots and rural tourism spots in the province has exceeded 54 million, and the total tourism consumption has reached 18.95 billion yuan, accounting for more than 140% of the same period in 2021.
This “grand occasion” is slightly different from people’s stereotype, and the biggest “X factor” is the epidemic. This summer, all provinces across the country have been affected by the epidemic. The epidemic broke out in Hainan and tourists were stranded in a large area. Epidemic outbreaks have also occurred in Wuxi, Lianyungang, Xuzhou, Nanjing and other places in the province. What many people are most concerned about is how much impact the epidemic has on the tourism market?
In fact, from the perspective of data statistics and local income, the overall impact of the epidemic on the cultural and tourism market in Jiangsu does exist, but it is relatively limited.
The epidemic that has lasted for three years has affected people’s psychological expectations of long-term travel. This summer, the number of tourists from other provinces in our province fell by 16.36% year on year, 53.09% compared with that before the epidemic. However, this also allowed local and peripheral tourism to undertake the travel demand of cross-provincial tourism groups, and the inter-provincial travel increased by 21.43% year on year. On the Tuniu platform, after the outbreak of the epidemic in Hainan and Xinjiang in early August, the orders of related products increased by 175.37% and 32.79% respectively, while the orders of products in Jiangsu Province increased by 9.91%.
In the past, with students starting school, the middle and late August are often the “inflection point” of the cooling of the summer tourism market. However, in the late August of this year, the epidemic situation in various regions gradually stabilized, and the “local people travel to the local area” feature was obvious, and the market heat rose instead of falling. In the late August, the provincial A-level scenic spots and rural tourism spots received 20.5744 million tourists, with a total tourism consumption of 6.902 billion yuan, which reached 128.60% and 135.35% respectively in the same period of 2021 according to the comparable caliber, and rose 23.13% and 18.34% respectively from the middle of August.
On the other hand, under the normalization of epidemic prevention and control, the “unprecedented” all-out “rescue” measures of all walks of life have played a positive role, and the promotion activities and consumption vouchers have been “increased”.
Throughout the summer, brand activities have become a “booster” to drive market recovery. Since the launch of the Changzhou Cultural Tourism Festival and the “Dragon City Night” Night Life Festival on July 15, the average daily tourist reception in Changzhou has increased by 15.74% compared with that before the event; On July 23, the “2022 Summer Suzhou Tourism Season” was launched, and the number of cross-city tourists in the province increased by 70%. Yu Qian, the director of the Tourism Promotion Department of the Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism, introduced that just before the summer holiday, our province launched the third season of “Water charm Jiangsu, you will be more beautiful” cultural tourism consumption promotion, and launched 14 themes and more than 500 activities in succession to promote the upgrading of business products and stimulate cultural tourism consumption.
“With the stabilization and improvement of the domestic epidemic prevention and control situation, the effective release of multiple travel favorable policies and the demand for summer tourism, coupled with the province’s’ precision ‘epidemic prevention and control, the series of activities of the third quarter of the supply-side cultural and tourism consumption promotion have significantly contributed to the sustained recovery of the tourism market in our province.” Ge Junlian, a consultant of the report writing and teacher of the School of Geography Sciences of Nanjing Normal University, commented.
Create a new scene of night economy and tap the potential of summer consumption
The hot weather enlivens the night travel and night economy in the evening wind. Based on historical and cultural resources, various places have created new scenes of night consumption and fully explored the potential of summer consumption. According to the data, 45 night cultural and tourism consumption centers above the provincial level received 33.3231 million people in summer, up 11.36% year-on-year and 78.24% month-on-month.
Every night, the float parade, fireworks show, five immersive experience theme pubs, and more than 20 “Night Hi” amusement projects… As a grand event to carry a generation’s “summer memory”, the 24th Suzhou Paradise Super Beer Carnival opened again on the evening of July 23.
“This year, we focus on bringing tourists rich and unique new experiences of night entertainment, night show, night food, night shopping and play.” Shen Cheng, head of marketing of Suzhou Hi-Tech Tourism Industry Group, said that this is not only the exploration of Suzhou Paradise to promote the integration of new business forms and launch diversified consumption scenarios, but also the local attempt to continue to explore the consumption resources of cultural and sports tourism and create more diversified and differentiated summer play experience.
According to Meituan data, the amount of night cultural tourism consumption in Jiangsu during the summer increased by 41.55% year-on-year. People aged 20-25 are the main group of night consumption, accounting for 30%. Night consumption in Suzhou is the most active in summer, accounting for 26.1% of the total night consumption in the province.
Enrich the “night tour, night market and night show” business forms, and the scenic spots in various regions are changing from a single “ticket economy” to a “comprehensive industrial economy”. Wang Qinghai, deputy director of Shugang – Slender West Lake Scenic Area Management Committee, introduced that the scenic spot restarted the large-scale immersive night tour project at the end of June, “Memory of Yangzhou in two clear moons”, and also launched the “Canal Carnival” night market, Hongqiao Square Lucky Collection · Intangible Cultural Heritage Night Market, Overseas Chinese Town · Dream Park Night Tour, Canal Sanwan Intangible Cultural Heritage Park trunk night market, etc., to stimulate the consumption of citizens and tourists. The thin West Lake night market has an average of nearly 10000 tourists per day, which has strongly promoted the recovery of the local culture and tourism market and the expansion and quality of consumption.
Supported by a more diversified supply of night tours, the “stay rate” of summer tourists has increased significantly. The 356 star-rated hotels in our province included in the monitoring, the summer order volume and consumption volume increased by 30% and 40% respectively compared with 2021. The night stay and consumption of tourists from higher-quality four-star hotels and above rose 48.19% and 78.93% year on year. “This summer vacation, there is a strong demand for leisure and holiday individual guests and conference rooms.” Zhou Lei, the general manager of Jinling Hotel, concluded that Jinling Hotel optimized its summer products in advance, developed products such as two-bedroom family rooms for the parent-child market, and participated in activities such as the “Lianyungang Seafood Festival” to drive consumption in the local market with upgrading demand.
The number of visitors to cultural relics and museums has increased sharply, which is deeply combined with research, study and tourism
Another notable feature of this summer is the sharp increase of visitors to cultural and museum venues, and the “deep integration” of cultural and museum tourism and parent-child research and learning tourism markets due to the shortened tourism radius of tourists. In particular, the fashion expression and personalized customization of the museum’s profound culture are favored. The parent-child travel market also shows the characteristics of shorter booking cycle and higher per capita costs.
Before the summer holiday, the Provincial Department of Culture, Culture and Tourism launched the theme activity season of “knowing tourism through natural resources”, and 118 theme activities have a significant effect on the tourists of cultural and museum venues. The number of summer visitors to 37 cultural and museum venues under monitoring reached 4.4683 million, up 76.38% year-on-year and 37.22% year-on-year. As of 24:00 on September 3, the topic of “# Museum and Travel #” on Weibo had been exposed 33.859 million times.
The Nanjing Museum held a series of themed activities of “Children’s Eyes See Cultural Relics”, the Meiyuan New Village Memorial Museum opened the “Meiyuan Red” red research road, the Nanjing Folk Museum organized the search for the Jinling Ancient Architecture Research Camp, and the Jiangning Weaving Museum launched the “Follow the famous works to learn Chinese – search for the” Dream of Red Mansions “in the subway”… introduced by the relevant head of the Museum Office of Nanjing Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism, The major cultural and museum venues in Nanjing launched many parent-child research and tourism products with “Nanjing temperament” this summer, which also made this city “a very influential research and tourism destination in the country” in the relevant list.
“Cultural tourism+parent-child tourism” is also changing the local tourism development orientation.
Due to the size of the city and the “siphon effect” around Zhenjiang, the tourism industry has been unknown, but the local cultural resources are rich. “In order to accelerate the release of the consumption potential of the summer tourism industry, we focus on the student groups, and launch customized cultural tourism routes and products in the summer to better meet the diverse needs of students and parents.” Cao Wei, a spokesman of Zhenjiang Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Television and Tourism, said that this summer, the bureau released eight high-quality routes for the summer cultural tourism market to the public, covering Yangzhong Dujiang Cultural Park, Maoshan New Fourth Army Memorial Hall, Vinegar Culture Museum Taiping Folk Art Museum and other important cultural and museum venues in the city, and launched 54 cultural and museum activities for children, and accelerated the recovery of the post-epidemic tourism market by playing the “parent-child card”.
On August 15, the third cultural venue in Wuxi, which lasted for one month, came to an end. This summer, Wuxi was the most affected by the epidemic in the province, and 22 A-level scenic spots were closed due to the epidemic. Although tourism activities are limited, in the “Cultural Venue Month”, cultural venues at the four levels of city, district, street and community are linked, integrated and innovated online and offline. A total of 331 high-quality activities have been launched, attracting some “stay in the local” tourists.
“Taking the city’s museums, memorial halls, open cultural relics protection units, archaeological sites parks and other cultural and tourism institutions and scenic spots as the positions, Wuxi has carried out the theme activity of ‘knowing about tourism through museum’, launched museum education courses and research routes, and held the talent selection, which can make the citizens who are inconvenient to travel better feel the ‘power of the museum’,” said Xiao Wei, secretary of the General Party Branch and president of the Wuxi Museum.
Change in response to change, so that the cultural and tourism consumption demand “has a place to place”
According to the evaluation of big data on the quality of Jiangsu scenic spots, a total of 138600 comments were received from netizens during the summer vacation. According to the semantic analysis of big data, positive comments accounted for 87.71%, and the overall favorable rate was second only to Gansu, ranking second in the country.
The dust of the summer tourism market has settled, but the transformation and improvement of Jiangsu’s cultural tourism industry is still on the way. Only by more actively adapting to the normalized market environment of epidemic prevention and control can we continue to help the cultural and tourism consumption market to store energy and seek change.
“The epidemic situation and normalized precise prevention and control that has lasted for three years are changing tourists’ travel preferences and behavior characteristics. Customized, high-quality and good service tourism products are tourists’ favorite.” Ge Junlian suggested that in the face of the increasingly escalating demand for travel, we should keep under pressure. On the one hand, the tourism industry in Jiangsu should further deepen the integration of culture and tourism, and launch new cultural and artistic products that meet the new tastes of tourists. On the other hand, it should further promote the digital transformation of the cultural and tourism industry in Jiangsu, improve the informatization, digitalization and networking level of tourism management and services, and better meet the tourism consumption needs of tourists.
“Yangzhou is rich in cultural and tourism resources, but its quality is not high enough, so it can’t ‘stay at home and wait for customers’. Instead, it should introduce the old and bring forth the new, and focus on brand building.” Shen Wenjie, director of Yangzhou Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Television and Tourism, said that in order to innovate the product supply, the local selection and creation of Yangzhou’s “Twelve Sceneries of the Canal”, and the strengthening of “Yangzhou’s Summer” and other city brands will continue to develop research tourism, camping tourism, online broadcasting, and e-sports Immersive experience and other new business forms will promote the upgrading of cultural tourism consumption.
The relevant person in charge of Suzhou Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Television and Tourism said that compared with other cities, digital culture and tourism has developed well in Suzhou, but it is still insufficient. To stimulate the vitality of cultural tourism consumption, it is also necessary to explore new space for online cultural tourism consumption. For example, we will continue to select high-quality products such as seasonal featured routes, performances for the benefit of the people, research and study tours of “natural resources and tourism”, and launch the “Junto Suzhou” platform for exhibition and marketing, and issue various more innovative and convenient cultural and tourism consumption vouchers.
“We should seize the window period for the improvement of epidemic prevention and control situation and the release period of cultural and tourism consumption demand.” Yang Zhichun, director of the Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism, said that Jiangsu will comply with the new trend of the normalization of epidemic prevention and control and the upgrading of cultural and tourism consumption, focus on accelerating the cultivation of new cultural and tourism business forms, creating new consumption scenes, promoting the high-quality development of cultural and tourism business forms, and enabling citizens and tourists to better spend every summer.