Newspaper group travel always avoids ＂shopping＂. How did online celebrity Shangchao become a landmark of cultural tourism？
Photo courtesy of Xuchang Pangdonglai Xuchang Wenlv
editorial comment/note
Zibo kebabs, Harbin ice and snow tour, Gansu Tianshui Mala Tang, Henan Xuchang Pangdonglai supermarket tour … The hot spots of cultural tourism in every city are constantly refreshing the cognition of people in the industry.
Brand building of urban cultural tourism is an important way to enhance the image and competitiveness of the city. In the context of the continuous warming of cultural tourism, some typical cases have caught the "sky-splashing wealth" with their unique cultural charm, innovative marketing strategies and high-quality service experience, and promoted the urban cultural tourism to explode.
From now on, the top news Henan Business Daily and the hometown Henan New Media Matrix will launch a series of observations, analyzing the "explosion" samples emerging in urban cultural tourism, and providing path reference for the construction and development of urban cultural tourism brands.
Top News Henan Business Daily reporter Wang Yingying
"The last time Xuchang was so hot, it may be traced back to Cao Cao’s capital here 1800 years ago."
"Its disadvantage is that my city doesn’t have it!"
In Xuchang, "Fat Donglai" is called "6A Scenic Area" by netizens without off-season. As a result, a new profession, Fat Dong came to study as a tour guide, was born here.
Why is it that when other city tour groups take "pure play without shopping" as the propaganda language, Xuchang can make a business supermarket become a drainage artifact of urban cultural tourism, realizing the two-way flow of cultural tourists and stimulating consumption?
Tourist attractions move towards urban cultural tourism and from cultural tourism to shopping malls.
"Dear tourists, welcome to Xuchang, our Xuchang is a city with culture, history and temperature!" Wei Qiong, a research guide, dressed in a straight suit and with a cordial smile on his face, tells the history, culture and business story of Xuchang while leading tourists through the floors from Fat East.
With the explosion of the Fat East, the "Fat East" tourist line was opened in many places across the country. In the past, when you traveled with a tour group and the tour guide took you to Shangchao, you would complain about the "compulsory consumption" of the tour guide. In Xuchang, not only a new profession like Shangchao research tour guide was born, but Shangchao research tour has also become a popular punching place.
According to the statistics released by Xuchang, Henan Province, during the Spring Festival holiday, three merchants from Pangdonglai, located in Xuchang City, received 1,163,300 tourists in three days, surpassing the scenic spot with the number one tourist reception in Henan.
In Xuchang, "Fat Donglai" is called "6A Scenic Area" by netizens without off-season. Why can a supermarket become a city’s cultural tourism punching place?
Sun Zhen, executive director of the Cultural Tourism Branch of China Planning Institute, believes that whether it is a "supermarket tour" from Pangdong or a Fujian tourist god who was very popular at the beginning of the year, it can be seen that cultural tourism consumption is moving from tourist attractions to urban cultural tourism, from cultural tourism to shopping malls and others. The popularity of supermarket tours in Fat Donglai is a typical example of "tourist attractions moving towards urban cultural tours and from cultural tours to shopping malls".
What is hot is not tourism, but new experiences.
"At the moment, when we are thinking about how to break through the city’s cultural tourism, we should be good at finding the best entrance for tourists to experience the city’s cultural life in the most comfortable angle." The relevant person in charge of the new cultural travel era said.
In 2023, Henan Cultural Tourism and Creative Development Conference proposed to enrich the business experience, vigorously develop new cultural tourism, and promote high-quality economic and social development with new cultural tourism.
In recent years, all parts of Henan have actively explored the ways of "subversive creativity, immersive experience, young consumption, mobile communication" and other urban cultural tourism. By optimizing the supply of cultural tourism products, they have created a new scene of cultural tourism consumption, allowing tourists to wander in history and culture and satisfy their beautiful yearning for "poetry and distance".
In recent years, Xuchang City has been continuously digging deep into the cultural resources of the Three Kingdoms to make the history and culture "alive". At the same time, it has combined the resources of the Three Kingdoms culture, Cao Wei culture and other resources to explore and create a number of new formats, new scenes and new models such as "Shang Chao+Wen Lv" and "Shang Chao+Yan Xue".
In addition to "Fat East", when searching for Xuchang’s travel strategy on the online platform, topics such as "Xuchang hairpin flowers", "Night tour of Caowei ancient city", "Xuchang’s water bus" and "Xuchang’s happiness is not limited to Fat East" have attracted widespread attention. "After visiting the Fat East, visit the ancient city of Cao Wei, experience a hairpin makeup and take a night tour by water bus" has become the choice of many tourists.
The ubiquitous warmth and culture are the biggest attractions for tourists.
How can urban cultural tourism find the "explosion" in the city and build it into a written tourism brand IP?
Sun Zhen believes that from the perspective of communication methods, we are in the era of new media, Z era and cultural self-confidence. From the perspective of the cultural tourism industry, there are still problems such as the sameness and homogenization of cultural tourism projects in the industry. The proportion of tourist attractions in the cultural tourism industry is getting smaller and smaller, and there are more and more new projects and new experiences coming across the border.
From the popularity of the "supermarket tour" in Fat Donglai, it is not difficult to see that young people are more willing to pay for the emotional resonance and thinking recognition behind it. It is true that the ubiquitous warmth and culture is the biggest attraction for tourists.
In recent years, more and more commercial spaces have become tourist punch points and even scenic spots in online celebrity. These places will no longer only meet the needs of "leisure shopping" as a whole, but will move towards urban tourism benchmark destinations integrating "culture, experience and commerce". Sun Zhen believes that both the upgrading of scenic spots and cross-border projects are driven by scenes, and the creation of urban cultural tourism brands should break the inherent thinking and create new cultural tourism scenes through immersion, experience, simplification, warmth and theme.