Experts believe that the key is to catch the traffic and retain tourists

Our reporter Qu Zhongfang reports from Beijing

From Chongqing Hongya Cave and Zibo Barbecue, to Tianjin Uncle Diving, Harbin Ice and Snow World, Gansu Tianshui Malatang to "My Altay", it has been hot out of the circle...... The recovery and popularity of the tourism market continues to become a hot topic in the daily life of the public, and with the arrival of this year's graduation season, the summer tourism market will set off another boom. According to the estimation of many mainstream OTA platforms, the first wave of travel peaks of this year's summer travel will start at the end of June.

On June 25, China Business Newspaper and China Economic Media Think Tank held a special seminar on "Helping the Strategy of Helping Tourism Power and the Promising Internet Platform" in Beijing.

Digital technology is transforming the travel industry

Ji Weimin, deputy director of the Institute of Industrial Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and president and editor-in-chief of China Business Daily, pointed out that the boom in tourism in recent years is inseparable from the important help and guarantee of digital technology. The wide application of a new generation of information technology, including the Internet, big data, artificial intelligence, etc., has not only driven the upgrading and transformation of tourist attractions, resorts, cities, and even villages and towns, but also played a huge role in the whole chain and ecology of the entire tourism industry in the new era, and digital technology plays a vital role in the high-quality development of the mainland's tourism industry.

Yi Shaohua, director and researcher of the Market Circulation and Consumption Research Office of the Institute of Financial Strategy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, summarized the new characteristics and trends of tourism consumption in the new era based on the research. Driven by the new generation of information technology, the tourism industry has achieved online and offline integration, giving birth to new formats and new models, and expanding new space for tourism consumption. For example, the new way of watching performances across cities has promoted the integrated development of "performance + tourism", and traveling with performances has become a new way of consumption. Since 2023, major concert activities have gradually resumed, not only in first-tier cities, but also in third- and fourth-tier cities and many counties, and various concerts and music festivals have begun to be held, and they are all very popular. In addition, "homecoming + tourism", celebrating the festival in tourism, is also becoming a new consumption trend. In addition, driven by information technology, around different themes and different geographical spaces, tourism has been used as the carrier to create various new formats and new consumption scenarios. This can be seen from the popular Zibo Bada Vegetable Market and Harbin Ice and Snow World. The combination of tourism and shopping is also very close, and the most typical case is the consumption scene of pedestrian streets in various places, which has become a new popular check-in place in the city.

"In the past, the communication method of local cultural tourism was mainly based on offline tourism promotion meetings, coupled with advertising on central and local TV stations, the image of cultural tourism may seem to be lofty, and more grand rendering words are used, but now the content disseminated through social media is more infectious and life-oriented, and can be specific to the scene, and this change in the form and content of communication can be more impressive, and it is also more able to attract tourists." Li Hong, Vice President of Public Affairs of Hello, shared the positive changes brought by social media to the communication of tourism culture from the perspective of brand communication.

Ning Guoxin, chief political officer of Utrust Tourism Group, issued an appeal to the industry at the meeting that "traffic data should be based on reality". He pointed out that the statistics, analysis and decision-making of big data have been applied to all aspects of tourism development, whether it is a government department, a scientific research institution, or an industry platform enterprise, it should be based on real data, and at the same time classify the real data to support the development of the industry more scientifically. Taking inbound tourism as an example, how to distinguish between tourist and business tourists, and what are the habits of inbound tourists...... For different groups to adopt different methods, real and effective data is very important, through the Internet platform and digital technology, to promote the upgrading and innovation of traditional travel agencies.

Cheng Jiaxiang, deputy general manager of the big traffic on the road, shared the experience of transformation with the company itself, as a traditional B2B company, on the road since about 2004 began to enter the big traffic track, serving the upstream and downstream enterprises of the big tourism industry, with the rapid development of the OTA field, the company has insight into the market demand for large teams out of the country and inbound, and began to do inbound air tickets; After the impact and test of the epidemic, based on the rapid iteration of OTA technology, we expanded our business lines on the road, and provided technical support such as API (Application Programming Interface) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software development to large OTA platforms, financial companies, and e-commerce platforms. At present, on the road, it has transformed from a traditional B2B company to a "specialized, special and new" technology company.

Wei Jian, public relations director of Mafengwo, revealed that as early as the beginning of this year, the platform was making some preparations for summer tourism. On the demand side, Mafengwo has launched a service tool group "Strategy Group" in the App to provide strategy support for hundreds of tourist destinations and adapt to the different needs of different tourist groups; On the supply side, Mafengwo has launched the "Youyun" SaaS system to link the supply chain and merchant stores of various destinations.

The traffic of Internet celebrity cities creates a "magic weapon"

The reporter of "China Business Daily" noticed that in recent years, the popularity of a tourist city is often accompanied by the characteristics of "Internet celebrity" - Internet celebrity characters, Internet celebrity snacks, Internet celebrity performances, Internet celebrity routes, etc., as if to become an Internet celebrity tourist city and attract "splashing" traffic, it is necessary to create an "Internet celebrity element".

At the seminar, participants actively spoke and discussed the creation of an "Internet celebrity tourism city" and shared their understanding and thinking. Ji Weimin believes that artificial intelligence (AI) recommendation algorithms are leading China into a new stage of mass tourism. Networking, digitization, artificial intelligence, and recommendation algorithms are playing the same role as Li Bai's "The Old Man Leaves the Yellow Crane Tower" and Du Fu's "Dongting Water in the Past, Now on Yueyang Tower" and other famous sentences, creating new tourism landmarks in the new era. However, it should be noted that there is no equity between becoming an "Internet celebrity city" and eventually becoming a famous tourist city and a new tourist landmark, nor can the recommendation algorithm bring passenger flow and make tourists feel at home. If the "Internet celebrity city" wants to last for a long time, it needs to continuously improve its supporting service capabilities in travel, accommodation, catering, play, shopping and other aspects, so that it can become a real tourist city and a real new tourism landmark.

Xu Yang, head of JD.com's retail life travel business department and domestic vacation business, pointed out through a review of the Internet celebrity cities that have successfully created "out of the circle" in recent years, and they are basically a three-dimensional structure from point to line to surface. "Objectively speaking, Internet celebrity cities cannot be created simply through very short-term and subjective creation." Xu Yang said that the government needs to invest real money, and at the same time, after having the interactive tools of new media, the government also needs to have better interaction with the people in the process of building an Internet celebrity city.

In Xu Yang's view, the government's participation in building an Internet celebrity city has solved two core problems: the first is at the tourism level, after the government intervenes, tourists have more objective guarantees in terms of safety; The second is that the government participates in it by investing resources, which also gives all participants more confidence, and tourism-related food, housing, transportation, travel, shopping, and entertainment businesses will be willing to participate, and do grass content through online channels, which can improve the transaction conversion rate.

Liu Yangshuo, general manager of the public relations and affairs department of Tongcheng Travel, put forward the concept of "tourism + X" at the meeting, and for tourists, X is the necessary motivation for their travel - it may be a show, a snack, an attraction, an event, etc. For tourist cities and destinations, the most important test is to find this "X" - what can induce ordinary people to share and gain a sense of gain? The key to building a tourist city is not to imitate other cities, to demolish and rebuild, to imitate the "Internet celebrity director", etc., but to tap the core competitiveness of the city itself and find the irreproducible point of the city itself. For example, the Tang Paradise in Xi'an is on fire, and if another place makes a replica of the Tang Paradise, then there is a high probability that it will fail.

In recent years, the mainland's tourism industry has developed rapidly, and the development of tourism is an important focus to promote high-quality development. At the National Tourism Development Conference held in May this year, the tourism industry was defined as "from small to large, from weak to strong, and increasingly becoming an emerging strategic pillar industry and a people's livelihood industry and happiness industry with significant characteristics of the times". Ji Weimin expressed the hope that through the symposium, the enthusiasm of academia, industry, politics and other parties will be mobilized on a larger scale, so as to jointly contribute to the tourism power and continue to promote the higher-quality development of China's tourism industry.

(Editor: Wu Qing Review: Li Zhenghao Proofreader: Zhang Guogang)