A new form of tourism that takes 2 to 3 hours by car, lasts 2 to 3 days, has high frequency and strong sense of satisfaction, mainly including camping, homestay, parent-child outdoor, etc.
“Free tickets, camping, rolling rice waves, strange melon and strange fruit, and popular science experience. It’s really good to play back and forth on the same day and walk the baby…” On October 3, Ms. Li, a citizen, casually sent a “circle of friends” message, “exploding” many friends who want to share. Ms. Li said that the best place for vacation is Tianfu Agricultural Expo, the main venue of this year’s Chinese Farmers’ Harvest Festival.
This National Day holiday, Tianfu Agricultural Expo Park has attracted a large number of citizens and tourists to come for sightseeing with its colorful series of activities, novel and interesting consumption scenes, and the rolling countryside scenery.
To review the cultural and tourism consumption of this year’s National Day holiday, “micro vacation”, characteristic cultural tour and outdoor sports tour characterized by short time and close distance have become new choices for citizens and tourists. The vacation mode, which is 2-3 hours away from the city by car, is a popular choice for local tourism consumption. The National Day tourism consumption data released by online tourism platforms such as Ctrip, Qunar and Feizhu also reflect this feature from the side. On the Ctrip platform, local and peripheral tourism orders accounted for 65% during the National Day, and the local and peripheral per capita tourism spending increased by nearly 30% compared with last year’s National Day.
When new games such as camping in the countryside and light outdoor have gradually become the high-frequency choice of public holiday tourism, how much cultural and tourism consumption market has the “micro holiday” featuring local tourism and peripheral tourism brought? How can “micro vacation” have sustained vitality?
A new way to play
October 7 is the last day of the National Day holiday, and Tianfu Agricultural Expo Park in Xinjin District, Chengdu is still very popular. In particular, in the main exhibition hall, more than 100 businesses and intangible cultural heritage craftsmen not only brought food, wine, Sichuan tea and other special agricultural products, but also rare traditional rope weaving, straw weaving, Paper Cuttings and other handicrafts. This has allowed parent-child family tourists to punch in one after another, and also ignited the passion for consumption.
“Unexpectedly, this year’s National Day, we found a ‘treasure’ resort at the door of our home. One day is not enough, so we will take the baby to play again today.” Ms. Li, who shared the National Day holiday with the reporter, expressed her joy.
During the National Day, many tourists choose to travel around. Zhang Liang, a Hebei native who has been in Chengdu for five years, brought his family to Luodai Ancient Town on October 1. “Luodai Ancient Town is close to home, with a short drive, and can feel Hakka culture. The National Day holiday will be arranged.”
Micro distance, micro time, micro plan… During the National Day this year, many citizens and tourists have turned their attention to “micro vacation” – a new tourism form with high frequency and strong sense of satisfaction, which takes 2 to 3 hours by car and lasts for 2 to 3 days.
How popular is the “micro holiday” this year’s National Day holiday? The data is more convincing. According to Ctrip data, this year’s National Day residents are encouraged to “celebrate the holiday on the spot”, with local and surrounding tourism orders accounting for 65%. Short-distance “light outdoor” travel is even more popular with young tourists. Frisbee, kayak, cycling and other new urban sports methods have increased by 425% year-on-year.
At the same time, the data from Qunar shows that due to the shortage of one room for home stay in many hotels around the city this year, the one-day travel products for the day round trip have become the main choice. On the Qunar travel APP, the search volume of local tourism-related travel products has continued to increase sharply since October 2, and the number of people following the “National Day not going out of town” section has reached millions. Among them, “sports outing” has become a new way of travel for young people. The search volume has increased by 200% on a month-on-month basis.
How prosperous is “micro vacation” consumption
The popularity of suburban tourism and “micro vacation” has also led to new tourism consumption such as residential accommodation, parent-child hotels, camping and so on.
“The rooms for the National Day holiday have been booked early, and there is no vacancy.” Yang Wanling, the head of a residential complex in Qionglai, told reporters that not only during the National Day, but also this year’s weekends have been basically full, and the guests are basically local tourists. “You have a demand for tourism. In the past, we planned a long-term sightseeing tour once a year or half a year. However, due to the uncertainty of the epidemic, young tourists began to explore the scenic spots around the city. This is a business opportunity for us.”
“During the National Day holiday this year, rural tourism homestays continued to be popular, especially the rural boutique homestays featuring unique landscape and hot spring health care were favored by citizens and tourists.” The relevant person in charge of Chengdu Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Film and Tourism introduced that the occupancy rate of rural boutique homestays in Pujiang Mingyue Village, Dujiangyan Irrigation Project Qingcheng Mountain, Longquanyi Shanquan Town, Anyen Ancient Town, Pengzhou Cifeng Town, Wenjiang Shou’an Town and other regions exceeded 80%, Some homestays are even hard to get one room for many consecutive days.
It is far more than the boss of B&B to share the cake of “micro holiday”. According to the data from Feizhu, the reservation volume of Chengdu National Day Gaoxing Hotel has increased by more than three times over the same period last month, and the surrounding hotels such as the Taikouli Business District on Chunxi Road, Kuanzhai Alley/College of Traditional Chinese Medicine Business District, Jinli/Wuhouci Business District, Tianfu Square and so on are more active in consumption.
Driven by the trend of peripheral tourism, the camping economy also continues to prosper. “I decided to go camping on a temporary basis. I made a phone call all day yesterday. The nearby campsite has been full in recent days.” Mr. Wang, a citizen, felt the excitement of camping on October 2.
According to Ctrip data, during the National Day, the number of camping tourism orders increased by more than 10 times year-on-year, with local orders accounting for nearly 80%, orders from outside the city accounting for 15%, and the per capita camping cost of about 650 yuan.
The same heat also appeared on the Flying Pig platform: the number of orders for National Day camping increased by 1.3 times compared with that before the festival, and personalized games such as “camping+Frisbee”, “camping+cycling”, “camping+barbecue”, “camping+natural painting”, “camping+insect exploration” were popular.
How far can “micro vacation” go?
According to the observation of data from various platforms, there is another obvious change in this year’s National Day Golden Week: while the prices of hotels and homestays around the city have gone up all the way, the average payment price of domestic airline tickets has dropped to the lowest in the same period in five years.
According to the Qunar platform data, the average price paid for air tickets in the golden week of November 2022 is about 650 yuan, 12% lower than that in 2021 and 20% lower than that in 2019; From October 3 to 4, the holiday price is low, as low as 500 yuan. In fact, since September, Chengdu, Shanghai and other cities have gradually returned to normal. On the Qunar platform, the average price paid for air tickets to Shanghai and Chengdu is 650 yuan and 680 yuan respectively, down 20% from 2021; The average price paid by the hotel is lower than that in 2021.
“This year’s National Day is dominated by local peripheral tourism, and many new local tourism methods are also emerging in the market.” For example, Fang Zexi, an industry analyst at Ctrip Research Institute, said that the hotel+X series package and the scenic spot+X package are all based on “scenery” and “wine”, superimposed with rich entertainment factors, matched with high-quality services, to meet the holiday tourism needs of tourists who are not far away but also have new exploration.
According to Deng Ning, the vice president of the School of Tourism Science of the Beijing Second Foreign Languages University, with the upgrading of various tourism formats, the popularity of activities such as script killing, secret rooms, characteristic blocks, catering and entertainment, and market watching and exhibitions has increased significantly.
How far can the new consumption of “micro vacation”, which focuses on camping, homestay, parent-child outdoor, go with fire? How to tap this new consumption potential? In this regard, Wu Ruoshan, a special researcher of the Tourism Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and president of the New Era Institute of Culture and Tourism, believes that with the normalization of epidemic prevention and control, tourists are changing their travel and consumption patterns, and paying more attention to safety becomes an important consideration. In this context, online tourism companies, tourism practitioners and other entities need to grasp this change feature. On the basis of paying attention to tourism resources and prices, they also need to pay attention to the needs of tourists to travel in peace of mind, so that tourists dare to go out and go out, so as to ease the worries of consumers.