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Difficulties and Solutions for Winter Tourism in Scenic Areas

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2025-01-04

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Editor-in-Chief | Yang Ming

Editor | Jing Xiangyuan

Source | Lao Zhang Discusses Culture and Tourism

Every year, after the National Day Golden Week, due to climatic factors, the tourism market gradually shifts from peak season to off-season. How to make up for the shortcomings of winter tourism has always plagued scenic areas and tourism planners. Coldness is one of the factors that hinders people from traveling in winter, but the lack of attractiveness of winter tourism projects is the most important reason. The distinct seasonal characteristics of winter are both a resistance and a driving force for tourism. This article discusses the difficulties faced by winter tourism and how to change perceptions and carry out diverse activities.

Current Status and Challenges of Winter Tourism Development

The development of winter tourism products mainly faces four problems and difficulties.

First, regional traffic restrictions. Scenic areas located in mountainous areas are constrained by location, transportation, and other basic conditions, resulting in low development of winter tourism resources and extremely inconvenient travel for tourists in abnormal weather.

Second, insufficient winter publicity. Most scenic areas downplay winter marketing and have insufficient publicity investment compared to the summer and autumn peak seasons, resulting in a significant reduction in the number of winter tourists and sluggish market response.

Third, insufficient investment in winter tourism products. There is a lack of policy and financial support needed for the development of winter tourism products, insufficient attention to the development of winter tourism projects, insufficient capital investment, and insufficient attraction to capital entering the market, resulting in many high-quality resources remaining undeveloped.

Fourth, backward infrastructure. Most winter tourism reception supporting facilities are incomplete, and some hotels and farmhouses have backward heating facilities with low thermal efficiency and poor hygiene, resulting in low comfort for winter tourists.

However, how can the "cold in the middle" situation in China's winter tourism market be broken? How can the "tourist shortage" caused by seasonal factors be balanced? The author believes that tourist attractions should further innovate their marketing methods, create high-quality winter routes, plan themed activities, and make winter tourism "no longer cold".

Change Perceptions and Increase Publicity Efforts for Winter Tourism

"There are no sluggish scenic areas, only ineffective marketing." With the arrival of the traditional tourism off-season, many tourism enterprises believe that potential tourists will not visit scenic areas for the time being, and no matter how hard they try, they cannot achieve their goals, so they reduce their market development efforts, do not visit customers, and their business strategies become rigid. The result is a sharp decline in sales performance, while scenic areas often attribute this to the arrival of the tourism off-season. As a result, enterprises make even less effort when the next off-season arrives, thus falling into a vicious cycle of "off-season" without marketing.

We need to unify the thinking of the staff in the marketing departments of scenic areas on the issue of off-season marketing. Although the sharp reduction in business often makes many staff members lack the enthusiasm to develop the market, in recent years, some tourist attractions have begun to show signs of being busy even during the off-season. As long as we carefully explore, we can still find business opportunities or even create business opportunities during the off-season.

First, we must change the solidified thinking that "winter is the off-season," improve the enthusiasm and service quality of winter operations, and thus expand the influence of winter tourism. The development of winter tourism cannot be separated from strong external publicity and promotion. Although the winter tourism market is weak, publicity and marketing cannot be weak. On the one hand, we develop the winter tourism market and promote the winter tourism brand, and on the other hand, we lay the foundation for the development of the tourism market in the coming year. We should do our marketing work even better during the off-season.

Off-season marketing will not have an immediate effect like peak season marketing, but the brand influence it brings is still very important. It's just that the marketing methods need to be changed compared to the peak season. Marketing and promotion are continuous, whether it is the off-season or the peak season. We cannot give the market any breathing room.

Winter tourism publicity can start from two aspects. On the one hand, we can carefully plan and launch a series of tourism marketing activities with winter characteristics, such as smog avoidance, hot springs, skiing, mountain climbing, and food, to attract tourists to enjoy the natural ice and snow. On the other hand, we can launch a series of preferential policies for tourists from nearby areas, such as half-price tickets or combined preferential tickets with multiple scenic areas, to attract tourists.

In terms of publicity methods, we cannot only pursue immediate results. We should comprehensively consider long-term development and all-round marketing, making everyone a potential customer of the scenic area, and then establishing a deep-rooted brand image for each potential customer.

Diversified Development of Winter Tourism Projects

In terms of project development, we should focus on skiing, skating, mountain climbing, and the development of hot spring health and leisure tourism.

First, strengthen the construction of existing ski resorts, consider adding several ski venues that combine natural snow and artificial snow around the ski resorts, expand the scale advantage, and promote the brand.

Second, develop tourist areas that integrate hot springs, health resorts, sports, and leisure. Soaking in hot springs in winter is a kind of enjoyment and an eye-catching project in winter tourism.

Third, develop all-weather leisure and vacation products based on greenhouse facilities, such as production-based sightseeing greenhouses, high-tech experimental base-type sightseeing greenhouses, and large-scale sightseeing and leisure greenhouses.

Fourth, through investigation and investment promotion, introduce a number of popular indoor games of different types, which can meet the different needs of different tourists and enrich winter tourism products.

Fifth, based on existing scenic areas, build and develop a number of scenic spots suitable for winter mountain climbing, highlighting individuality and modernity, meeting the needs of some tourists who like adventure and excitement, and increasing the selling points and attractiveness of winter scenic areas.

Prepare Festive Activities to Enrich Winter Tourism Content

Although winter is cold and there is a lot of rain, snow, and ice, it is also a time when folk activities gather in northern China. By using folk activities to boost the popularity of the local area, the profoundness of Chinese civilization is reflected through the display of diverse elements of different ethnic groups' production, life, clothing, and entertainment.

Focusing on time nodes such as "Christmas, New Year's Day, Spring Festival, and Lantern Festival," actively plan and introduce activities with distinct themes, rich content, strong entertainment, and high participation, continuously enriching the cultural connotation of the off-season, enhancing tourist participation and experience. Carefully plan and launch a series of activities for New Year's Day and Christmas, enhance tourist interaction, boost local popularity through activities, guide tourists to spend on vacations, and increase tourism revenue.

Cultivate Winter Tourism Brands

In winter tourism marketing, we should also create tourism products with local characteristics. Characteristics are attractiveness. The essence of tourism is a behavior that experiences different, characteristic, and individually attractive things. Only by creating characteristic tourism products can we enhance the attractiveness of winter tourism.

Cultivate the Individual Tourist Market

Further explore the individual tourist market in various source regions, actively develop the individual tourist group market, and actively develop self-guided and semi-self-guided tours. Conduct intensive off-season publicity and promotions in surrounding areas, giving full play to the driving role of the surrounding tourism market, bundling "points" or "lines" to transform sporadic promotions into overall promotions, and actively developing the individual tourist market.

In short, winter tourism development is an indispensable part of the development of the tourism industry. By increasing publicity and promotion, improving service levels, and making up for product shortcomings, we can improve the tourism industry structure, promote the advantages of China's winter tourism industry, achieve "no off-season" and even better peak seasons, and further develop and strengthen the tourism industry.

Special Research on Investment in the Tourism and Culture Industry

To gain a deeper understanding of the investment and development of the tourism and culture industry, the China Tourism Academy, in conjunction with the China Amusement Machine and Amusement Park Association and other organizations, is conducting a special research activity on investment in the tourism and culture industry, and sincerely invites all member units and tourism and culture enterprises to participate in the research.

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