Author|bean sprouts
Zibo, Harbin, and Tianshui have been out of the circle one after another, giving a strong stimulant to the national cultural tourism.
Since last year, local cultural and tourism bureaus have joined the battle for traffic, trying to make the local area a new traffic password through various ways. After all, the skew of the whole network traffic brings not only high attention, unprecedented passenger flow, but also tangible economic benefits.
On March 28, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism issued the "2024 Departmental Budget of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism", with a total budget of 10.33 billion yuan, which covers all the revenue and expenditure of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
Entertainment Capital learned that this year, the budget for the promotion of cultural tourism in many provinces exceeded 100 million yuan, and many of the first-level cultural tourism in prefectures and cities also had budget arrangements of more than 10 million yuan.
Under the high budget, it is the determination of cultural tourism around the country to try to find a breaking point. "We are now mainly focusing on micro-short dramas, hoping to bring local tourists to the flow", "For us, summer is the off-season, so our next main thing is to find ways to explore summer tourism resources", "We have a large-scale performance budget every year, hoping to promote cultural tourism through performances"......
Under the general trend, various content platforms, MCN institutions, and content producers are actively responding to explore new paths and strategies for cultural tourism marketing. For example, Huya has created a national "village competition", Kugou has launched the first seasonal long-term IP with works such as "Shangchun Mountain", and Wuwu Media is also exploring a diversified marketing model of "short dramas, micro-comprehensives, music + cultural tourism".
But behind the seemingly hot scene, problems also appeared.
"Some local cultural tourism requires the local area to be built into an Internet celebrity city within half a year, but the popularity is essentially the result of the right time, place and people," more than one industry insider told us.
"The essence of cultural tourism is ecology, not business, if you only rely on the relationship between Party A and Party B to see the cultural tourism marketing will definitely not last long, and more importantly, how to form a good positive cycle between cultural tourism and content."
"Any Internet celebrity and hot phenomenon cannot escape the three-month traffic curse", some industry insiders commented on the closure of stores after the Tianshui Malatang boom.
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Although there are many contradictions, in the final analysis, the current challenges of cultural tourism marketing are mainly how to adapt to hot spots to obtain traffic, how to empower local industries in a positive cycle, and how to create long-term IP after being out of the circle. On June 19, the 2024 China Online Performance (Live Broadcast and Short Video) Industry Annual Conference was held in Harbin, Heilongjiang, bringing together a number of cultural and tourism industry practitioners such as local cultural tourism, platforms, and MCN institutions to discuss the breakthrough of cultural tourism marketing.
Platform support can only be "pounded", and "hard traffic cannot be pushed"
The successful precedent of going out of the circle has become the target of cultural tourism benchmarking in various places, and even become a KPI that must be achieved.
"However, many local cultural tourism do not have a clear purpose, but just hope that through online content marketing, they can receive a splash of wealth in the short term and quickly become an Internet celebrity city," a person in charge of the relevant business of the institution told us.
Under the guidance of this "Internet celebrity city", many local cultural tourism will cooperate with the platform as soon as possible in the communication, trying to achieve its own popularity through relatively concentrated and effective exposure, but from the results, many of them have little effect.
The reasons behind it are not difficult to understand:
From the perspective of online content marketing, the explosion of traffic not only requires all localities to take the initiative to disseminate local cultural and tourism resources, but also needs to follow the direction of Internet traffic and find signs that can be ignited. "Although cooperating with the platform can give a relatively clear amount of exposure, whether it can really cause a burst of fire on the whole network depends on whether the specific communication point has a degree of discussion and whether there are popular genes," the person in charge of a short video content agency told us.
For example, the initial explosion of Tianshui Malatang originated from a video of Malatang posted by netizen @CupLiangbaikai, although the production was rough, but the color was attractive and full of weight, and it quickly won millions of likes, and then with the help of netizens' spontaneous check-in and official intervention, the "Tianshui Malatang" became popular.
The signs of Internet traffic are not all positive, and they may also come from complaints from netizens.
The reason why Harbin was able to successfully get out of the circle last year was a word-of-mouth crisis. At that time, the ice and snow world was complained by netizens because the tickets were too expensive, and after the public opinion appeared, the local cultural tourism did not treat it coldly or reduce the negative voice, but responded sincerely, upgrading the service from the actual experience to solve the "too expensive" public opinion, and the official "listening to persuasion" also triggered the follow-up of the locals, and finally successfully created a warm-hearted image of the big brother in the Northeast.
At present, cultural tourism in many places is highly sensitive to public opinion, and even requires "zero negative reviews", but in fact, cultural tourism, as an offline experience-oriented content, is more likely to "listen to persuasion" in the face of negative evaluations than anxiety, and turn the crisis into a turning point.
In addition, although on the surface, the budget for cultural tourism marketing is considerable, but it is not as generous as imagined in terms of specific content marketing, and the budget gap between different regions is also very large, and it is not cost-effective or realistic to spend money on streaming.
"When we cooperate with local cultural tourism, the budget review needs to have clear delivery results, such as stage construction, materials, etc. for offline activities, so local cultural tourism often needs to carry offline activities for online marketing. Moreover, the budget of cultural tourism is divided among various aspects such as infrastructure and cultural tourism projects, and the budget for content marketing is relatively limited", the head of a short video content marketing agency serving many provinces and cities in Northeast China told us.
From the perspective of the essence of offline experience business, after the traffic is really ignited, it is also a question whether it can catch the "pouring wealth".
What is needed is that the local cultural tourism industry continues to improve tourism services, business environment, and cultural tourism IP to ensure a good experience for tourists and the benign operation of the local cultural tourism ecology, that is, 90% of the preparations need to be made before the explosion.
Many practitioners have mentioned that the reason why Harbin was able to explode last year was also because of the full preparation in the early stage, such as the Ice and Snow World project itself has been launched for many years. After Tianshui spicy hot fire, the passenger capacity once exceeded the scope of bearing, and the local cultural tourism was quickly mobilized, and the flow to other regions was channeled through special product exhibitions and special cultural performances, which alleviated the pressure to a certain extent, and also allowed other counties and cities to successfully obtain a wave of passenger flow.
However, some local cultural tourism has begun to find solutions, especially in the breakthrough of traffic.
"Cultural tourism marketing should focus on and repeatedly spread the same point; In addition, we need to find content that is closely related to the people, such as food, which cannot float in the air," a person in charge of the cultural and tourism department of a central provincial capital city told us.
"In terms of breaking the circle of traffic, we must first find local influencers and KOLs, so that cultural and tourism resources can become popular in the local area first, and then expand the communication area," said a supplier responsible for the account operation business of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the government. "Content marketing itself is also a seed for netizens to plant the place in the list of future travel."
Although they all want to replicate the popular path of Internet celebrity cities and quickly become the top stream, cultural tourism marketing is actually a long-term, massive, and multi-participant content ecology. It is necessary for local cultural tourism to combine its own development stage, unique tourism resources, and Internet traffic trends, and make concerted efforts online and offline, rather than just staring at the label of "Internet celebrity city".
Cultural tourism funds can only be a blessing, not the essence of business
Stimulated by the cultural tourism boom and the budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, many MCN/live broadcast organizations and performance organizations hope to get a piece of the pie.
But the cake of cultural tourism marketing budget is not easy to share.
In addition to the audit pressure and budget allocation mentioned above, local cultural tourism is also facing pressure to increase revenue. "The core is to use the window of cultural tourism to attract tourists to the offline, and the next step is to activate other local industries", a practitioner who does large-scale performances + cultural tourism projects analyzed to us.
"There are many industries behind cultural tourism, not just the popularity and influence of local cultural tourism, so pure investment in influencing is not the ultimate goal of cultural tourism, nor is it a benign state."
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Therefore, the current cultural tourism marketing is no longer just a simple advertising, but also leverages multiple investments with small funds to achieve large-scale communication under the premise of partial or full cost recovery.
There have been many local cultural tourism began to try a benign way of cooperation, the first business model is to carry cultural tourism elements under the original independent business model, empowering each other.
The way of resource replacement to do cultural tourism marketing is a relatively common cooperation method under this model, which is mainly applicable to short video content institutions.
"Our content marketing cooperation with cultural tourism is more about resource replacement, such as local cultural tourism will support our content creation, or undertake talent travel, etc., our core revenue is actually tourism routes, live streaming and other products", the person in charge of a short video agency told us that at present, the agency's talent mainly publishes videos related to cultural tourism, and there are mature tourism products internally.
"And based on this high-quality content, we can develop more new products. In addition, the support of local cultural tourism will also bring official endorsement to our products. ”
Secondly, it is also a common way to cooperate with large-scale performance IPs with revenue capacity. Since large-scale performance IP itself has considerable box office and investment revenue, the government does not need to bear excessive costs, but is more based on the support of venues, transportation, security and other resources. But a well-received and well-received performance can not only attract tens of thousands of people offline, but also have a lot of noise online.
Previously, based on the characteristics of its talents, Wuwu Media cooperated with many places for offline performances. For example, the first city check-in fitness sports carnival, the "National Fitness Carnival" was launched in Qingdao, and Liu Genghong led the audience to dance; This year, the worry-free talent matrix cooperated with Kunming, Yunnan Province to launch the model of "cultural tourism + performance + destination check-in" to attract tourists to Kunming for the New Year.
The recent hot trend of cultural tourism short dramas is also the essence of the cooperation path under this model. As an emerging and high-growth content industry, short dramas already have mature revenue models such as platform account sharing, C-end payment, and brand sponsorship, and these revenue methods are also applicable to cultural and tourism short dramas.
At present, some cultural and tourism short dramas can have commercial income other than government sponsorship, such as "Your Island Has Arrived" not only won the sponsorship of Changde Peach Blossom Spring, but also won the title of Tomato Novel.
In addition, there is also a cooperation model, that is, a service company with marketing capabilities, acting as an agent for the management rights of the scenic spot for several years. On the one hand, the scenic spot can use a guaranteed income, and on the other hand, by expanding publicity, stimulating passenger flow and consumption, and then sharing the excess income.
The second business model is to explore the integration of quality and efficiency in cultural tourism marketing.
Specifically, it can be combined with e-commerce to plan live broadcasts on topics such as traceability and cultural tourism promotion. Last year, Qianxun's bee live broadcast room "Bee Charm China Tour" launched the first traceability special Yunnan station, which was broadcast live for 7 days in Kunming, Lijiang, Dali and other places in Yunnan, recommending local characteristic agricultural products and tourism products to consumers, and finally reached a turnover of more than 23.43 million yuan.
It can also be combined online + offline to create large-scale marketing events to stimulate passenger flow and consumption. With the help of the social media popularity of "Shangchun Mountain", Kugou Music has created the first seasonal innovative long-term IP, which are "Shangchun Mountain", "Watching Summer Water", "Enjoying Autumn Leaves", and "Walking Winter Snow". The IP not only launched a theme series of dress-ups online with a number of scenic spots, but also launched an offline limited live to unlock a new model of "cultural tourism marketing".
It is understood that "Shangchun Mountain" linked a total of five scenic spots, including Longmen Grottoes, Yueyang Tower, Wudang Mountain, Detian Waterfall and Enshi Grand Canyon, and finally achieved a total exposure of 100 million +, with an average year-on-year increase of 23% in GMV and a 19% increase in visitor traffic reviews.
In essence, the cultural tourism marketing budget is only a blessing under the prosperity trend of the cultural tourism industry. If you don't have a mature business and don't have the ability to monetize traffic, it's not easy to simply earn money for cultural tourism promotion.
Getting out of the circle is only the first step, IP is the future of cultural tourism
For those cities that have been out of the circle, a practical problem is how to turn traffic into retention and continue to improve the local cultural tourism activity after the popularity subsides.
Not long ago, #天水麻辣烫扎堆闭店#, #天水麻辣烫倒闭成网络流量密码#等词条冲上热搜, sparked discussions. "How many people will be harmed by the economic stimulus method of drinking water to quench thirst", "There is no lasting attraction, similar to one-time consumption", "Zibo barbecue, Tianshui Malatang, is nothing more than a large-scale network marketing, it can't last"...... Netizens have said.
Not only Tianshui, but also cooling is the inevitable result of all Internet celebrity cities, how to maintain the vitality of cultural tourism marketing after being out of the circle?
Combined with the measures of cultural tourism and content platforms in different places, the current solution path mainly focuses on the following aspects: First, it is to develop new tourism resources to make up for its own seasonal restrictions.
Although Harbin has successfully come out of the circle, it is mainly the choice of winter travel in the public perception, and the popular "Ice and Snow World" is also a seasonal limited project, and other seasons belong to the off-season. In view of this, the current focus of Harbin's cultural tourism work is summer tourism, hoping to tap more tourism resources suitable for summer, and attract external enterprises to invest in tourism, etc., to strengthen the summer.
Two days ago, Harbin Cultural Tourism hired actor Zhang Yi as the ambassador of Harbin Cultural Tourism, and released a promotional video, playing the theme slogan of "Ice and Snow World, Summer Paradise".
Second, take advantage of the opportunity to launch brand IP with local characteristics and long-term operation to continue the popularity.
Although the offline queue of Tianshui Malatang is no longer in full swing, Uncle Malatang, who was out of the circle on social media at that time, launched a new product seasoning package named after the brand, "When it is good, it can sell 1,000 packs a day". It is understood that the relevant local departments have given strong support, and the next step will be to expand online sales.
The second Zibo Barbecue Festival was successfully held not long ago, and 10,000 people came to continue the upsurge of "entering Zibo to catch the exam". In the future, this IP will also bring more empowerment to the local area.
The third is to create normalized events or cultural IPs, and continue to stimulate the vitality of cultural tourism with the help of circle influence and celebrity effect.
For example, Huya, a game live broadcast platform, has created the IP of the "Village Games" across the country, linked sports and e-sports, and launched various events, e-sports village markets, e-sports cultural tourism routes and other projects, which not only attract audiences to the destination, but also attract local people to join the event and achieve real national e-sports.
This kind of event IP itself has a certain audience and activity, and the combination with cultural tourism can effectively attract offline traffic and leverage online voice, in fact, Aranya has also enhanced its brand influence through a variety of cultural IPs.
At the moment when the demand for cultural tourism has exploded, cultural tourism marketing has become an effective starting point, attracting the active participation of cultural tourism, content, platform and institutions from all over the world. However, the essence of cultural tourism marketing is content ecology, which requires long-term operation and traffic sensitivity to break the situation.
Although the current cultural tourism marketing is still facing certain challenges, these problems actually appear with the acceleration of the development of the cultural tourism industry, which is a step that the cultural tourism industry must climb to enter a new stage. Moreover, there have been many effective explorations, and we look forward to the birth of more characteristic cultural tourism destinations in the future.