How to take over the “wealth and wealth” of Internet celebrity cities? Turning data assets into new ideas for solving problems
When any city is favored by traffic, in addition to a significant increase in popularity, there is also overwhelming wealth. Zibo Barbecue became an overnight sensation, driving Zibo to achieve domestic tourism revenue of 63 billion yuan in 2023; Harbin will break out of the circle with its ice and snow tourism, receiving 135 million tourists in 2023, and the city's total tourism revenue will be 169.245 billion yuan.
However, as the popularity of the city's IP decreases, rapidly cooling stores, sporadic tourists, and various negative reviews after a run on resources have become the "sequelae" of Internet celebrity cities. "The scenic spot was inadvertently pushed to the top by a few Internet celebrities, and the passenger flow far exceeded the reception capacity. Economic benefits or massive complaints. Is the traffic in front of the scenic spot a broad road or an abyss?" Xiao Yang, a senior tourism expert, said about the Internet's influence on Internet celebrity cities and cities. The traffic brought by the scenic spot raises questions, which represents the voice of many practitioners.
How can Internet celebrity cities capture the "flooding wealth" brought by traffic? Capitalizing data will be one of the ways to solve the problem.
No hotspot can occupy traffic resources for a long time, and Internet celebrity cities are no exception. According to Douyin's "Big Number of Accounts", the search index for the keyword "Zibo Barbecue" reached its first small peak of 2.4767 million on April 9, 2023, and reached a peak of 11.0579 million on April 29. After the May Day holiday in 2023, the value showed a downward trend. As of June 30 last year, the value was only 109,100, a reduction of more than 100 times from the peak.
From "Zibo BBQ" to "Southern Little Potatoes" to "Tianshui Malatang", in the current era of highly developed mobile Internet, the popularity of Internet celebrity cities not only gives new vitality to the city, but also drives the digital marketing model of local cultural tourism. A path is provided. However, when Internet celebrities can be copied and traffic can be imported, it is not easy to turn traffic into retention and Internet celebrities to become long-term celebrities.
Looking at the current situation of the domestic cultural tourism industry, there are many factors currently restricting the transformation of traffic in the cultural tourism industry in various places. The first is inadequate infrastructure. For example, the transportation connections in some tourist attractions are not convenient enough, resulting in poor accessibility for tourists, which affects the overall tourism experience; problems such as difficulty in parking and using the toilet in scenic spots have not been solved, resulting in poor return rate of tourists. A survey from the China Tourism Academy shows that basic service facilities greatly affect residents’ Labor Day travel decisions. When residents make travel decisions, 41.1% of tourists believe that local basic service facilities play a decisive role, and 34.3% of tourists believe that Secondary role. During the travel process, 43.6% of tourists believe that software and hardware infrastructure affects 30-50% of their holiday travel experience, and 27.4% of tourists believe that it affects more than 50% of their travel experience.
Second is the lack of original content. Mobile Internet and short video platforms have driven the development of Internet celebrity attractions. Various Internet celebrity check-in spots have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain. This has resulted in a large number of "copy and paste" attractions. Tourists feel the same wherever they go, and everything they eat and buy is lost. local characteristics. The lack of truly original content has led to serious homogeneity and lack of attractiveness in tourism products, which is a common problem faced by many scenic spots and cultural tourism destinations. According to statistics, among the more than 20,000 scenic spots in the country, there are more than 8,000 A-level scenic spots. However, more than 90% of the "homogeneous" tourism products in these scenic spots are seriously oversupplied and are in operational difficulties or even serious losses. On the other hand, the supply of mid-to-high-end products is insufficient or seriously insufficient, making it difficult for people who really want to play and know how to play to find eye-catching projects or scenic spots.
Over-reliance on OTA platforms has also caused some cultural tourism companies to lose their business initiative in marketing and sales, and they also need to pay high commission fees. Over the past two decades, my country has achieved leapfrog development of mobile Internet, and tourists have long developed the habit of using Internet platforms to book and arrange travel itineraries. As the stickiness of a large number of short video platforms and social platforms increases, OTA platforms further rely on new media and new technologies to increase market share and almost monopolize the traffic entrance. Therefore, OTAs can not only help scenic spots improve operational capabilities such as data management and traffic conversion, but also continue to squeeze the profit margins of cultural and tourism companies based on the profitability of commercial platforms, causing the latter to gradually lose their voice over users.
"Among the listed tourism companies, firstly, the performance of destination-based companies in various scenic spots has increased significantly, and the performance of famous landscape scenic spots is particularly outstanding; secondly, hotels have maintained outstanding performance, with revenue rising slightly but profits increasing significantly; thirdly, the performance of tourism and performing arts companies The recovery is accelerating, especially in the third quarter," Wu Weihai, president of Guohe Huaxia Urban Planning Research Institute, said in a previous interview. However, judging from the absolute value of profits, OTA platforms eat most of the cake, while the profitability of physical travel companies still needs to be further improved.
During on-site visits, we found that a large number of cultural tourism projects lack professional and effective market positioning and brand building, and most of them have form but no content; a large number of investments in infrastructure and public welfare projects failed to produce expected economic benefits. What's more, some local governments have invested heavily in the construction of tourist attractions and have turned them into ghost towns. Not only has the number of tourists grown slowly, but related industries have also been unable to develop, falling into a vicious cycle.
In addition, although many scenic spots have built digital platforms and introduced data management, the data quality is far from expected, and it is impossible to form effective data resources and then form data assets, let alone effectively utilize data and empower industrial development. .
At present, local governments pay full attention to the consumption-stimulating effect brought by cultural tourism and continue to promote cities to go out of the circle and become Internet celebrities through various means such as social platforms. However, due to the overall uneven management and operation level, data and technology cannot be applied in practice. , resulting in a mismatch between a large amount of investment and returns, lowering the investment efficiency ratio of the cultural tourism industry, and the economic returns are not as good as expected.
How can we make better use of this traffic and know which tourists have come to the city, which consumption items they prefer, and which aspects of the city they praise or are not satisfied with? At a time when the digital economy is developing rapidly and the country is also committed to vigorously promoting data element the direction of qualitative productivity.
In the cultural tourism industry, there have been many explorations into the use of data assets, and it has brought huge economic benefits to enterprises and destinations. For example, the Ctrip platform has cooperated with Dubai Duty Free Shop in the early years. Ctrip users who go to Dubai Duty Free Shop to shop can enjoy an exclusive 5% discount, seasonal promotions, etc. This cooperation brought more than 65,000 transactions to Dubai Duty Free in 2017. The average single purchase amount of tourists was US$900, and the total consumption was equivalent to approximately RMB 380 million based on the current exchange rate. The essence of this cooperation is based on the precise use of traffic and user data to directly drive tourists' consumption in duty-free shops.
Cultural tourism companies have also made attempts to create a smart tourism ecological service system. For example, Xiangyuan Culture and Tourism collects digital operation data, business and channel data, plan completion rate, weather data, ticket details and other multi-dimensional data to achieve the same period comparison of operating income, unit price and conversion rate, age, gender and other tourists. The real-time synchronization of information such as portrait analysis and channel analysis provides data support for "precision marketing, precise management, and precise services" of tourist destinations, and provides a reference for scientific decision-making by management.
As the value of data elements is fully released, data capitalization will bring huge changes to the cultural tourism industry, and also bring new problem-solving ideas to the cultural tourism industry's transformation from traffic to retention-promoting localized cultural tourism. Data base construction, linkage OTA online traffic service offline application implementation.
On the one hand, it forms a transportation hub, data hub, and service hub by establishing a regional tourist service center, ensuring data asset resources to form a regional physical fence, and providing resource-based services for local data assets; on the other hand, it guides OTA data and offline regional application services Open up the connection, rationalize the construction of service facilities and supporting facilities according to the needs, and ensure the effective reuse of service resources. The former uses entities to provide convenient services and obtain data, and is based on the construction of real-time management functions of floating population to ensure local data elements; the latter relies on regional tourism application servers to provide digital services, digital rights, and digital souvenirs as its main functions, and is based on talent recruitment. , provide a sense of city belonging and city IP promotion, and provide support for local governments to establish long-term digital marketing mechanisms.
By deepening the layout of data capitalization and releasing the value of data elements, the government continues to improve policy matching and decision-making accuracy, deeply supports the development of local industries, and promotes the linkage of related industries and the gathering of talents. Cultural tourism companies can more accurately understand market demand, make more reasonable products and decisions, and explore various financial investment opportunities brought by data capitalization while continuously improving tourist satisfaction. At the same time, various tourist destinations will find more ways to generate retention from traffic and elevate the development of the cultural tourism industry to new heights.