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Six major trends and directions in the development of the tourism industry

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2024-09-16

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The tourism industry has undergone tremendous changes over the past decade. Consumer behavior, industry trends, investment environment, and business formats are all vastly different from the past. These trends are worth paying attention to and reflecting upon. As one of the industries with the greatest potential for development and leading role in the past and future, the trends and directions shown in the development of the tourism industry are also worth learning from by other industries. Because tourism, especially culture, is empowering other industries.

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Editor-in-Chief | Yang Ming

Editor | Jing Xiangyuan

Source | Lao Zhang Discusses Tourism

Trend 1: Tourism Integration, High-Quality Development

High-quality development has become the core goal of the tourism industry. The scope of high-quality development is very broad. First, it is necessary to solve the problem of endogenous growth, rather than relying on project investment to drive it. Second, high-quality development needs to address the sustainability of income, the replicability of projects, and the ability of each existing product to generate long-term income without increasing a large amount of investment. The report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China made a timely statement on the main social contradictions in China, pointing out that "In the new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics, the main contradiction in Chinese society has transformed into the contradiction between the people's ever-growing needs for a better life and unbalanced and inadequate development."

Since 2019, high-quality development has become the core of all industries, including regional governments and enterprises, which pay close attention to the driving effect of IPs, tourism products, and brands on surrounding industries, whether the integration of culture and tourism is deep, whether it can continuously improve the service and operation level of the entire industry, improve the added value of tourism products, and enhance the immersive experience of tourism products to ensure the high-quality development of tourism products and projects and meet the cultural consumption needs of the people.

Immersive Experience of Tourism Products

Taking culture as the core, achieving high-quality integrated development of the cultural and tourism industries is one of the trends. The boundaries of the tourism industry are becoming increasingly blurred, and its extension is constantly expanding. Old factories, old streets, and abandoned mines are all becoming tourism projects; factories and rural areas are also being tourism-ized, transforming into industrial tourism or rural tourism... Consumers' definition of tourism is constantly being refreshed, and their thinking is constantly being subverted. For example, museums and art galleries, which used to be rarely visited, have now become popular destinations for tourism consumption. Tourism, especially culture, is becoming an increasingly popular topic. Shibanyan Town in Linzhou, Henan, has become a well-known mountain art resort destination in China because of the thousands of students who come to sketch every year; Henan has made rapid progress in its domestic tourism status due to the endorsement and promotion of a series of tourism programs on Henan TV.

Shibanyan Town, Linzhou, Henan

Henan TV's popular work: "Tang Palace Night Banquet"

Trend 2: Immersive Business Formats, New Tourism Empowerment

In recent years, many new business formats have emerged in the domestic tourism market. These are projects that have a keen judgment of new tourism trends, are significantly different from past business models, have new technological breakthroughs, and can reflect the most essential value of the tourism industry, namely, humanistic value. These are considered new business formats.

For example, "Only Henan - Drama Fantasy City," China's first drama-themed park; Super Wenheyou, which transforms restaurants into curatorial companies, media companies, and content companies; Aranya, which transforms real estate into a tourism benchmark; the immersive drama "Sleep No More"; the high-end camping project Xingtuobang; the micro-musical "Apollonia," etc., all belong to emerging business formats.

These business formats have subverted traditional perceptions and opened up new development space for the industry. Immersive tourism is in a time of drastic change and uncertainty. The industry and enterprises need to break through and overtake, to experiment and challenge. These new business formats are those enterprises that have sensed the changes earlier and are willing to make changes. Their early perception of the changing times will bring lessons and inspiration to the entire industry.

Micro-musical "Apollonia"

On the other hand, some new business formats have added new impetus to the development of tourism. The night economy has received unprecedented attention in recent years. It not only helps to stimulate domestic demand among local residents, but also extends the stay of tourists, business people, and others, driving local economic development. Mantangli, a small mountain village in Anji, Zhejiang, has introduced creative lighting projects to develop the rural night economy, attracting city dwellers to come for night tours, directly driving local catering and accommodation consumption, making up for the shortcomings of Anji's rural night tourism products, and exploring a new path to promote rural revitalization through night tourism. Brand crossovers have found new growth points for tourism. The Palace Museum, Dunhuang, and many other brands have jointly developed co-branded cultural and creative products, frequently bringing traditional culture into the spotlight.

Tourism Night Tours

The emergence of these new species and new business formats makes us truly feel that the tourism industry today is no longer about scale winning, but about innovation winning. For practitioners, under the trend of new tourism, it is crucial to create projects that are suitable for the local market environment, meet consumers' personalized needs for tourism, and adapt to investors' investment capabilities. The past practice of competing in investment scale, simply and crudely replicating successful projects at home and abroad, and disrespecting the underlying logic of the tourism industry will face fatal risks.

Trend 3: Urban Renewal, Rise of Micro-Tourism

In the post-epidemic era, the public's travel has shown new characteristics of "short distance, short duration, and high frequency." This new travel characteristic corresponds to micro-vacation. The epidemic has accelerated the arrival of the micro-vacation era. In the past, the top of the list of popular destinations during short holidays were often large theme parks or resorts, but now they have become some nearby attractions. And some tourism enterprises that are at the forefront of the micro-vacation trend have ushered in opportunities for rapid development.

Rise of Micro-Vacations

For example, Xilegu in Qingyuan, Guangdong, offers hot springs, water parks, and non-powered amusement parks. At the same time, tourists can participate in various cultural and artistic activities held by the resort, such as poetry festivals and music festivals, enhancing tourists' micro-vacation experience. During the epidemic, its annual performance grew by more than 30%, becoming a benchmark for performance that defied the headwinds during the epidemic.

Xilegu, Qingyuan, Guangdong

Some urban center projects are also becoming micro-vacation destinations. Compared with tourism projects in the urban suburbs, urban micro-vacation projects are closer, have lower consumption (relative to long-distance travel), are more environmentally friendly, have higher consumption frequency, are more spontaneous, and are a very noteworthy phenomenon.

Xingledu Camping Town in Zhuhai Hengqin is also located in the city. It has a good ecological environment, luxurious camping facilities and non-powered equipment, and the concept of "natural growth" research and learning, coupled with its urban location, allows children to spend a happy and fulfilling time in the city.

Xing Le Du Camping Town

Trend Four: Consumption Diversification, Driven by Internal Circulation

In recent years, consumption upgrades and downgrades have erupted simultaneously. The tourism industry also shows a phenomenon of consumption polarization, with opportunities emerging in both high-end and low-end consumer markets.

Firstly, the high-end tourism market remains red-hot. In 2021, the opening of Universal Studios Beijing instantly ignited the market, selling out opening day tickets in one minute, with hotels fully booked within half an hour. Even ticket prices of 418 yuan on weekdays and up to 748 yuan on specific days couldn't deter people's enthusiasm for visiting.

Universal Studios Beijing

The high-end homestay market is also booming. Data released by Tujia, a homestay platform, before the Spring Festival shows that unlike previous years where bookings were made a week in advance, most entire courtyard rentals for the 2022 Spring Festival were booked a month in advance; orders for entire courtyard rentals during the Spring Festival increased by more than 50% year-on-year compared to 2021, with the average stay extending to 2-3 days and the average price exceeding 10,000 yuan. Tujia's data also shows that independent courtyard homestays were in high demand during the 2022 Spring Festival, with order volume increasing by about 56% compared to the 2021 Spring Festival. During the 2022 Spring Festival, homestay transaction volume increased by more than 30% year-on-year, and the average price exceeded 1,000 yuan.

The booming high-end tourism market is due, on the one hand, to the pandemic's disruption of outbound tourism, creating opportunities for the domestic high-end tourism market; on the other hand, the quality of domestic high-end tourism projects is constantly improving, stimulating consumer desire. A typical example is Atlantis Sanya, which absorbed a large amount of demand from people unable to travel abroad due to the pandemic, becoming a winner in high-end consumption during the pandemic. In the first half of 2021, Atlantis Sanya's turnover reached 835 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 152.1%. In July alone, turnover reached 233 million yuan, with a room occupancy rate of 96%.

Atlantis Sanya

The halt in outbound tourism has also brought development opportunities to remote areas such as Xinjiang. According to the Southern Metropolis Daily, after the halt in outbound tourism, some travel agencies in Guangdong that originally specialized in outbound tourism have switched to "Xinjiang self-drive tours".

Secondly, low-consumption behaviors are highlighted under the trend of micro-vacations. For example, camping has become a major trend in family outings in recent months. Some small and beautiful projects, including Xing Le Du Camping Town, Shanghai Ji Gao Tu Wo Wo Non-powered Amusement Park, Dora Mengchong Amusement Park (dealing in cute pets), and Meland Club, known as the "Hermes of indoor children's amusement parks," performed better during the pandemic than large-scale tourism projects.

Parent-child camping

It is worth noting that a large number of urban municipal parks and free or low-cost projects have attracted many consumers, which has also impacted some high-end and giant projects. This trend will be further strengthened with changes in macroeconomic conditions, policy orientation, and people's consumption habits.

Trend Five: Spiritual Immersion, New Experience Upgrades

Immersive gameplay has always been closely related to tourism projects. In 1955, Disney transformed the virtual world in film into a real-world theme park, which can be considered the earliest immersive experience. Now immersive gameplay is everywhere, such as immersive dramas like "Sleep No More," "Nanjing Happy Event," "Again See Pingyao," "The Zhiyin Ship," and "Apollonia," as well as script killing and escape rooms, which are very popular with consumers.

The Zhiyin Ship

The popularity of immersive gameplay stems from changes in consumer logic. Consumers have experienced the 1.0 era of sightseeing and the 2.0 era of theme entertainment, and their tastes are shifting towards the 3.0 era of immersion. The past one-way mode of "you perform, I watch" can no longer meet current consumer needs. Immersive gameplay allows tourists to participate through two-way interaction, shifting from passive acceptance to active participation, creating a greater sense of presence. People are no longer simply tourists, but wholeheartedly participate and fully engage their emotions.

Sleep No More

"Only Henan - Drama Magic City," with an investment of 6 billion yuan and a total area of 622 mu, elevates the immersive experience to an unprecedented scale. The Magic City has 56 spaces, 21 theaters of varying sizes, with 3 main plays and 18 smaller plays performed alternately, with a total duration of nearly 700 minutes. The high concentration of theatrical performances, coupled with clever route design, allows tourists to become immersed in the play even before entering the city, and the play continues in their minds after leaving, rising from physical immersion to spiritual immersion.

Big data shows that immersive experiences have developed into a fashionable leisure and entertainment project accepted and participated in by people of all ages, especially young people. About 75% of related consumption comes from young people aged 20-35, who are very interested in elements such as experience, storytelling, playability, artistry, and night tours.

Drama Peach Blossom Land

In 2021, the development of immersive experiences was included in the "14th Five-Year Plan" for Cultural and Tourism Development, which emphasized the completion of 100 immersive experience projects in cultural new business training. The development of the immersive industry has been officially put on the agenda.

With technological advancements, immersive gameplay is also constantly evolving. We believe that the metaverse will bring fundamental disruption to immersive gameplay in the future. The metaverse is essentially a virtualization and digitalization of the real world. In the metaverse, scenic areas can enrich product content, and intangible cultural heritage, cultural creativity, IPs, and characteristic projects can all be developed into virtual products.

Trend Six: Content is King, New IP Innovation

Content platforms such as WeChat, Xiaohongshu, Douyin, Kuaishou, and Bilibili have become the main channels for consumers to receive information. No era is more suitable for content marketing than today; whoever has the ability to create content has the initiative. The rapid rise of brands such as Yuanqi Forest, Zhong Xuegao, and Perfect Diary relies on large-scale content placement. It can be said that a company's content marketing level directly determines its marketing level.

How to do content IP? It mainly reflects two abilities: the ability to create topics and the ability to create empathy, that is, what are the common points between the project and the city. A good project should provide value to consumers, but simply staying at this level is not enough. For a project to quickly become a favorite among locals, it must find common ground with the city's managers and residents.

The implementation of cultural IPs does not have high scalability. "Most cultural immersive projects must be mainly supported by local culture, using corresponding performance methods, and adding related IP implantation to achieve icing on the cake. Conversely, the "Invincible Little Sister" replicated across the country cannot compare to the popularity in its base camp, the Datang Never Night City in Xi'an."

Amidst the impact of the pandemic, the emergence of immersive tourism projects has boosted industry information and played a positive role in post-pandemic industry revitalization, including the future R&D direction of tourism products. In the future, for immersive tourism, especially street-based projects, consumers will mainly consist of local and nearby groups, with those from other regions playing a supplementary role. Therefore, the speed of iteration and updates needs to be increasingly faster to ensure lasting vitality and attract more consumers to make repeat purchases.

From the development and transformation of the tourism industry since the pandemic, we see that "a new era of digital tourism is accelerating, and the future Chinese tourism industry will show major trends such as a shift from sightseeing and resort travel to cultural experience travel, a shift from marketing models to operational models, real estate gradually returning to the essence of tourism, and a shift in profit models from 'single' to 'diversified.'"}, {

Over the past decade, with the rise of the national trend, immersive tourism formats have sprung up like mushrooms after a spring rain, often quickly becoming popular upon their debut. Currently, although the tourism industry is still in the recovery phase, immersive tourism projects continue to gain popularity, providing valuable insights for tourism development.

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