Green shade blocks the sun, and summer flowers are blooming. Midsummer is a golden time for travel and sightseeing because of its beautiful scenery. Recently, the cultural and tourism markets around the country have shown unprecedented vitality. New formats and models have emerged one after another, providing more diverse leisure and entertainment for residents and tourists, releasing huge consumption potential, and injecting development momentum into the summer economy.
May 19 is the 14th China Tourism Day. In response to the active situation of the cultural and tourism market, many places launched diversified preferential service programs to make tourism more accessible to people. Hebei organized 380 A-level tourist attractions across the province to launch free ticket policies, and planned and held more than 600 themed activities with various highlights; Shenyang released the first high-speed rail travel ticket counting product in northeast China, and you can enjoy a minimum discount of 50% off accommodation, tickets, etc; Shanghai launched nearly 100 new games and products for people's benefit in five major sectors, namely, cultural and art tour, riverside tour, suburban leisure tour, urban sea test tour, and fashion shopping tour
In the first quarter of this year, the cultural and tourism market boomed, with 1.419 billion domestic tourists, 203 million more than the same period last year, up 16.7% year on year. Among them, 1.077 billion urban residents traveled domestically, up 14.1% year on year; Rural residents made 342 million domestic trips, up 25.7% year on year. In terms of consumption, domestic tourists spent 1.52 trillion yuan on travel, up 17.0% year on year.
At present, with the deep integration of culture and tourism, the use of modern science and technology to innovate cultural and tourism formats is injecting new vitality into tourists' cultural and tourism experience. The application of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), big data and other technologies has improved the experience of tourists and increased the interest of tourism. The National Museum launched the "Smart National Expo", and built a parallel museum using the latest information network technology. It has collected 7073 pieces of three-dimensional data, 1.65 million pieces of cultural relics images, and 97 exhibition data, so that the audience can see more clearly. At the same time, the National Museum has also accelerated the creation of cultural relics to activate the stage play tour and create a rich digital consumption scene.
In this regard, the person in charge said that generative AI technology brings good opportunities for the development of cultural tourism, enriches and develops new business forms and product supply of cultural tourism, realizes the innovative style of knowledge fusion through data integration, and realizes the panoramic presentation of Chinese culture and the sharing of digital achievements for all.
According to the data, 15700 A-level tourist attractions have been built nationwide. Last year, the number of direct employment in A-level tourist attractions nationwide exceeded 1.6 million, and the total number of employment driven by A-level tourist attractions exceeded 10 million. With the increase of the county coverage of the national A-level tourist attractions from 73% in 2012 to 93% in 2023, 1597 key rural tourism villages and towns have formed a model leading, driving the improvement of employment in rural areas and the development of related industries, and enabling rural revitalization and prosperity.
Zhejiang Culture and Tourism Department promotes the scenic spots of ten thousand villages under the "Ten Million Project", arranges water friendly space, ancient village culture and other distinctive business paths according to local conditions, and designs exclusive Zhejiang imprinted cultural and creative goods. Through the demonstration and transformation of the whole village, the environmental quality of thousands of beautiful villages has been improved, ordinary villages have been built into scenic spots, attracting tourists, while creating a doorstep economy for villagers, bringing tangible benefits to farmers, and becoming a highlight of Zhejiang tourism.
In recent years, more and more tourists choose to go deep into the countryside to experience the local folk customs and natural scenery. Not long ago, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism launched 82 national rural tourism boutique routes of "Free in the countryside at the age of", making it easier for people to travel. In the beginning of summer, you can taste the local characteristic wild fire rice in Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province. In the Xiaoman season, you can go to Yichang, Hubei Province to experience the "Nicangzi" labor and entertainment. Before and after the mango seed, you can choose to go to Hubei Province to "open the field with mango seed and the village's charm is Yangxin" line, and you can also go to Guilin, Guangxi, to experience the "Zheli rice" art festival, intangible cultural heritage workshops Folk custom museum and other agricultural culture have the charm of the times.
Recently, in order to attract more tourists to the upcoming summer tourism boom, many places are holding their own summer tourism promotion conferences all over the country to increase the supply of high-quality tourism products. Heilongjiang sent a cool summer invitation to the south, and opened food stalls in Yunnan, Guangdong and other places, as well as people along the scene show "Quanfen"; Shandong has built a "Shandong in my eyes", "hospitable Shandong, experience Qilu" research tourism brand, and ten cultural relics themed tours including Jiaoji, enabling the deep integration of culture and tourism.
The summer tourism peak has come, and the surge of tourists has brought some management pressure to the tourism market. In order to make tourists feel more confident in their consumption, cultural and tourism departments around the country have recently carried out in-depth actions to improve the quality of tourism services, continued to increase the standard of the tourism market, actively promoted the special rectification work of unlicensed travel agency business and "unreasonable low price travel", and established a regular secret visit evaluation mechanism.
In summer, everything flourishes. Relevant experts said that the data of the cultural and tourism market showed the continuous recovery of consumer confidence. To do a good job in promoting consumption, we should focus on expanding domestic demand, further optimize the cultural and tourism consumption environment, better meet the diverse and high-quality tourist needs of the people, and inject strong impetus into the long-term and stable development of China's economy. (Liu Yuqing and Wang Meng also contributed to this article)
Edited by: Wu Jiahong