2023-05-10
Moderator：WANG Kan, Researcher of the Tourism Research Center, Capital University of Economics and Business
Panelists:
1. Pu Hong, Party Secretary of Lijiang Municipal Committee of CPC
2. QIN Dingbo, Deputy Director-General of Chongqing Municipal Development Committee of Culture and Tourism
3. LI Xinyu, Vice President of Trip.com Group
4.FANG Yan, Assistant President of Sunriver Holding Group Co., Ltd.
5.Cindy ZHAN, Country Director of CNN International
Full text:
WANG Kan: Mr. Qin, we know that the cultivation of a new business style needs to conform to the objective economic development pattern, and at the same time, it is inseparable from the support of competent authorities. Can you sum up for us that while cultivating new business styles, what should our industry authorities prioritize to give play to their strengths and avoid weaknesses?
QIN Dingbo: As one of the lead government departments overseeing the development of night tourism and the nighttime economy, the culture and tourism department has always adhered to the following principles. First, plan in advance, let culture play the leading role, and advance coordination across government departments and industries. Second, seek brand innovation and green development.
For so many years, we have been following these principles in promoting the development of the night economy. Specifically, the culture and tourism department should properly deal with the following relationships.
First, the relationship between quantification and beautification. We should first of all light up the night scene of a city and then beautify the environment. Chongqing has evolved from a neo-lit dazzling night scene to one that is culturally rich, eco-friendly, and artistic. For the beautification project, we have set up the Chongqing Tourism Investment company which will invest RMB 10 billion to light up and beautify the river banks of the Yangtze River and Jialing River at night.
Second, the relationship between appearance and economic return. Particular attention should be paid to the latter. We should create a consumption platform and a consumption environment, with facilities for night consumption, so as to really light up the night economy, gather crowds, and boost the business and merchants’ income. This is the second relationship we should handle properly.
Third, the relationship between the day-time economy and night-time economy. Whether it is the landscape or the products, we need to coordinate their day-time and nighttime value, or harmonious development.
Fourth, the relationship between visitors and local residents. This is the tricky part. Chongqing receives more than 80 million overnight tourists every year. The flood of visitors does bring economic benefits to our city, but it also adds to the city’s hustle and bustle and disrupts the quiet local life. So how should we handle their relationship?
Over the years, we have been relying on local residents and intelligent technology to refine our work in city management. In particular, the tourism department shall advocate the sharing of the city between hosts and visitors. Generally, on holidays, the culture and tourism department will post an article via their official account on Weixin, kindly asking local citizens to avoid visiting, whenever possible, the busy sections and landmark attractions, giving tourists from outside Chongqing the opportunity to explore the city and its bridges. Every year, we would receive praise from tourists, saying that Chongqing is the most visitor-friendly city, and some netizens even say that not visiting is disrespectful to the city. So you can see that tourists are also very friendly to our city.
WANG Kan: As a traditional enterprise that invests and operates scenic spots, what did Sunriver do in terms of cultivation and innovation in the past three years?
FANG Yan: First, we developed a barrier-free commercial attraction as we noted the huge tourism market of the elderly and families with children and even people with disabilities. We first applied this concept in Mangshan, Hunan Province. On top of the RMB 800 million investment in Mangshan, we added another RMB 400 million for accessibility development: an 8 km accessible path that stretches from the entrance all the way to the mountaintop with an altitude of more than 2,000 m, so that people in wheelchairs, the elderly, and children in strollers can enjoy the view along the way just like any able-bodied visitor. On the mountaintop, many disabled visitors were full of tears at the sight of strange rocks, rime, and the sea of clouds, because they had never seen them before. Mangshan is equipped with technology and facilities that many scenic spots in the plains have not used; it’s the first in China and also the only one in the world to do so. This is the first point I want to make.
Second, people’s way of travel and consumption habits have undergone great changes in the past three years due to the pandemic. People are more willing to travel locally; especially families with children who prefer to go to urban leisure parks and sub-urban green spaces. For young people born in the 1990s and 2000s, they do not find the view of famous mountains and rivers is not as luring as their parents, and they are fine watching Douyin at home.
In response, we launched the Sunriver Leisure Resort Garden, a suburban tourism product. We incorporate parent-child consumption and themed entertainment products through space design to appeal to family tours and meet the needs of urban leisure for all age groups.
Third, we have developed more mini-vacation products. Our previous vacation products are concentrated in high-end hotels in Dali and Huangshan, as well as homestays in Zhangjiajie and Fenghuang. We are now developing light-luxury camping sites in natural scenic spots, as well as tree houses for outdoor tourism. Our brand Zyj.com is very popular, We are confident that nature-friendly vacation products like this will have bright prospects. Thank you.
WANG Kan: The pandemic has not only hindered personnel exchanges but also disrupted the exchange of information. As a global media, CNN must have grasped a lot of new trends in international tourism. I have read some of your new practices in promoting international tourist destinations. Could you share some of your thoughts in this respect?
Cindy ZHAN: As a first-class mainstream news media, CNN is very authoritative in terms of learning from audiences. One of the big changes we have observed over the past three years is their emphasis on sustainable and responsible tourism.
The Maldives has traditionally been positioned as a luxury destination, both in terms of its product lines and rates. But during the pandemic, by learning from their target audience, such as frequent flyers with strong purchasing power, high-end business people, and key opinion leaders, we find that their definition of “luxury” has changed: what they want is more than experiencing luxury, but to be close to nature, to go deep into the local environment and community, and to bring positive changes to the locals. This is a very big change.
Based on these studies, we have reached in-depth cooperation with the Maldives. We shot our series of programs and promotional videos for the Maldives. In one of the videos, we do not feature the sunny beach as most others do; instead, we show the audience the daily work of a local marine conservationist, through which to show them how our way of tourism can make a positive difference to the sustainable development of the Maldives.
The second example I want to give is Tokyo. Despite about ten scattered outbreaks of Covid-19, they never stopped promoting the city as a destination. In terms of content, they came to us and said that they wanted to add the idea of sustainable development to the routine publicity materials.
From a third-party survey we can see that the result is very encouraging: the proportion of respondents expressing “willingness to travel to the Greater Tokyo Area ” has increased by more than 56%, and the survey was conducted during the pandemic. To sum up, I would like to give you 5 “Rs.”
1. Remind: Remind international tourists of Chinese culture and tourist attractions.
2. Recover: it is very important that our recovery should be sustainable, and we need to win tourists’ trust and connect with them through the idea of sustainability by resonating with them.
3. Rebuild the trust.
4. Reinvent: we need to invite international tourists to China again.
5. Return: let international tourists come and return, so we need to influence their travel decisions.
WANG Kan: The next speaker is Mr. Li Xinyu from Ctrip. What do you want to share with us on today’s topic?
LI Xinyu: As you can see in the past ten years, in fact, the biggest change in the domestic tourism industry is the rapid rise of rural tourism, as evidenced by many data, of which farm stays play a very important role. In terms of the number of tourists, the number of tourists in the countryside jumped from nearly 800 million to 3 billion from 2012 to 2019, with a stunning average annual growth rate of 20%. In terms of proportion, in 2019, the total number of tourists received by rural attractions accounted for half of the total, and the income they generated was about 30%. In terms of benefits, rural tourism contributes more than 35% to the employment of local farmers in the destinations and especially boosts their per capita disposable income. Farm stays are a key force in driving this growth, as can be seen in relevant data released by Ctrip.
In the past five years, the number of farm stays registered on Ctrip has soared from 70,000 to nearly 300,000, with an average annual growth rate of 60%. Last year, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and ten other ministries and commissions jointly issued the Guidelines on Promoting the High-quality Development of Farm Stays, putting farm stays in a very important position. It mentions that farm stays are an important form of rural tourism, an important driving force for the rural economy, and a very important area for promoting rural revitalization in all respects.
As far as Ctrip is concerned, we want to do our part in promoting rural revitalization. We have also done research and investigation in counties and cities to see if tourism can help with rural revitalization. And we have found that interestingly, the more days more mid-to-high-end tourists stay in the destinations, the more obvious the boost to local consumption is, because the longer they stay, the more consumption scenarios they will have, and the more they will contribute to the local economy.
But a real-life problem we face is that even in the more high-quality rural destinations, there is still a lack of high-end or even qualified accommodation facilities. So based on the results of preliminary research, in March 2021, we officially launched a strategy to revitalize rural tourism.
The core point is to build 10 high-end not-for-profit rural accommodation facilities by the end of 2025, which we call Ctrip Vacation Farm House. We also want to scale up and empower 100 such farmhouses across the country, and help train 10,000 rural tourism professionals.
WANG Kan: Secretary Pu, what innovations and reforms are there to support Lijiang’s development?
Pu Hong: Lijiang is a well-known tourist city at home and abroad. As the moderator just said, we are working hard to build Lijiang into a world-famous tourist city, and we are doing our best to build the city brand “Lijiang, a place you don’t want to leave.” We have three considerations: a new look, new synergy, and new products. Now I’ll elaborate on them one by one.
First of all, we must give Lijiang a new look to distinguish it from the rest of the country. We limit the height of the buildings in downtown areas so that no building will block the powerful visual impact created by the snow mountains. We are also working to make Lijiang a garden city full of scenery in spring. We are doing our best to protect the ancient town of Naxi people, with its old bridges and flowing water. More and more new energy vehicles have hit the road, and there is also the new airport. In general, the key to Lijiang’s uniqueness is to make the traditional more traditional, and the fashion more fashionable. Such a new look is the first thing that makes people reluctant to leave Lijiang.
The second thing is the new synergy. I think this means that everyone in the city should understand and engage in tourism. We hope that every citizen in Lijiang can tell the story of Lijiang clearly. The exchanges and blending between the new arrivals and the natives will make humanity the most beautiful scenery in Lijiang. Everyone can be the spokesperson for Lijiang as a tourist destination. We want to build the public consensus that Lijiang is our shared home and translate it into concrete action.
The third thing that makes visitors want to stay is new products. The first is high-end vacation and leisure products, including Foliday Town, Hylla Vintage Hotel, Villafound, Wumo Qinglu, and Astrotopia camping sites. These facilities all have an old-style simple appearance but are international in their DNA. They have cultural heritage, international rhythm, and comfortable, high-end accommodation services to attract and retain tourists. They represent the high-end resorts that Lijiang can develop by giving full play to its advantages.
The second type of product is, for Lijiang has a unique rural style that cannot be found elsewhere in the world, so we will make full use of it to develop rural tourism products.
The third kind of product is wellness resorts, for the average temperature in Lijiang is 14.9 degrees, making it one of the few cities in the world free of summer heat and winter cold, and we can take advantage of this. I am often touched by the fact that there are many people doing yoga while enjoying the view of snowy mountains, and also people practicing traditional Chinese medicine. Wellness tourism products are therefore another new business style we want to cultivate.
The fourth type of product is the combination of culture and tourism, as mentioned by General Secretary Xi Jinping. Culture and tourism should be highly integrated, and culture is the lifeline of our tourism products.
The fifth category of products bundles Lijiang and tourism together. We hope that Sport plus Culture and Sport plus City will become the new growth points of Lijiang, the capital of highland sports and the city of wellness. We have an unparalleled advantage at this altitude. So this is the fifth category of products we want to develop.
Therefore, it’s the new products that make visitors hate to leave. Today what I want to share with you is that novelty is the keyword running through Lijiang’s development history. As we work to build the city into a world-famous cultural and tourist city in this particularly challenging era, we want to give the city a new look, new synergy, and new products.