How difficult is it to grab a ticket to the Forbidden City after someone spent 4 hours scrolling through it without getting one? Brushing for more than ten minutes is the norm for accounts | teams | the norm
The popularity of summer study tours is not decreasing, and the news that tickets to the Beijing Palace Museum are hard to come by continues to attract attention. The head of a certain tourism brand stated in a media interview that the travel agency incurred a loss of about 10000 yuan due to the cancellation of the group due to the inability to help guests grab tickets for the Forbidden City.
How difficult is it to grab tickets to the Forbidden City? Liu Wen, a staff member of a large travel agency's Beijing branch, told the Liberation Daily Shangguan News reporter that she almost uses her company's team account to help study tour group guests grab tickets to the Forbidden City every day. The time it takes to continuously refresh the page is as short as ten minutes, and as long as three or four hours. If she is lucky, she can grab twenty or thirty tickets, or she may not receive them at all.
Team tickets are difficult to grab, and individual tickets are impossible to grab on their own
Liu Wen has been in charge of the company's Palace Museum ticket booking business for over three years. "Since the outbreak of the epidemic, we have been offering one-day tours to Beijing, and the Palace Museum study tour is one of the main products. Because the Palace Museum offers free reservations for minors under the age of 18, study tours have always been popular. Liu Wen said that previously, tickets for minors in the Palace Museum could be booked one day in advance, and the travel agency team had a maximum order limit of 50 people per order. If the number of people exceeded 50, they could be split into several orders for reservation, and there was basically no problem.".
The relatively difficult to grab is adult tickets. Due to the requirement of a 5:1 adult assistant ratio for each research group, which means that every 5 minors need to have one adult to enter the Forbidden City together, Liu Wen's main task is to grab adult tickets for the Forbidden City. "If we can grab 5 adult tickets, we will take in 25 underage tourists. If we grab fewer adult tickets, we will take in fewer customers." Regarding the loss of 10000 yuan mentioned by a tourism company, Liu Wen said that this may be mainly due to the abnormal cost expenses caused by the other party's price increase in ticket grabbing, which is generally unlikely to occur.
Liu Wen admitted that tickets to the Forbidden City have indeed become increasingly difficult to obtain this year, especially on the eve of holidays. Now, except for Monday when the Palace Museum is closed, she almost always sits in front of the computer on time every night, preparing to grab tickets: logging in to her account in advance, importing tourist information, and starting to click the mouse to refresh at 8 o'clock. Sometimes it takes more than ten minutes to grab some tickets, and more often it takes more than an hour to continuously refresh and see if there are any new tickets released. "I was the most nervous about grabbing tickets before this year's' May Day '. One time, I only managed to grab more than 20 tickets from 8pm to around 11pm, and another time I didn't get any tickets until 12pm. We couldn't get adult tickets, so we had the children of the study group follow the certified tour guide into the Forbidden City, but this way the tour guide couldn't pick up other groups."
It is still so difficult for travel agency team accounts to grab tickets, and it is even more difficult for individual travelers to grab tickets to the Forbidden City. A few days ago, Ms. Lu, a citizen who took her child to Beijing for a trip, told reporters that she had tried to grab tickets to the Forbidden City herself, but found that she couldn't even get a stopwatch. Instead, she booked a half day tour with explanations for 168 yuan on an e-commerce platform. Unexpectedly, as we were about to depart, we were informed that the admission policy for minors in the Forbidden City had changed, and children's tickets were not booked and could only be refunded. "Fortunately, Beijing has abundant tourism resources, so there's no need to worry about having nowhere to play. It's possible to book tickets for the National Museum at 17:00, but it's impossible to grab tickets for the Forbidden City by yourself."
Tonight at 8:03, the Palace Museum tickets for next Thursday are fully booked. Mobile screenshot
Domestic tourists are unable to make appointments, and some inbound tourists who come from thousands of miles to China may also be unable to make appointments. Due to this, the local reception agency is also unable to make visiting the Forbidden City a fixed project, causing some inbound tourists to miss the opportunity to learn about the precious cultural and museum venues of the Chinese nation. It is understood that the Forbidden City currently has a daily visitor quota of 30000 people, and all visitors need to make reservations. Before the epidemic, the daily visiting limit for the Forbidden City was 80000 people. A tourist who recently visited the Forbidden City said that, except for the narrow entrance that requires queuing for ticket checking, entering the Forbidden City is relatively spacious and not crowded.
Suggest booking team tickets in advance to avoid individual passengers traveling at the wrong time
Besides the Forbidden City, it is also difficult to get tickets to the National Museum this summer. Moreover, the National Museum does not open a dedicated team reservation channel. Tourism agencies will remind tourists to grab tickets on their own during trips involving the National Expo.
As a public cultural venue, popular cultural and museum venues including the Forbidden City and the National Museum have won public praise in terms of collections, exhibition displays, architectural design, as well as digitalization and intelligence, making them popular check-in points. This not only demonstrates the overall improvement of public cultural literacy and the demand for high-quality cultural products, but also demonstrates the cultural confidence of the Chinese nation. Is there a better way to arrange appointments for such popular venues besides the collections themselves?
Referring to the ticket reservation mechanisms of domestic and foreign scenic spots, some industry experts suggest that large popular tourist attractions can establish a direct ticket reservation system with major tourism platforms and key tourism enterprises. For example, Shanghai Disneyland, although its team reservation does not have many special measures in terms of ticket prices or flexibility, the park has signed contracts with multiple large tourism platforms and enterprises, and the system for individual electronic ticket sales and reservation is directly connected. The ticket limit is released in the system 30 days in advance, and tourists can place orders and make reservations on the contracted tourism platforms or the official website of tourism enterprises. The system can directly issue tickets, greatly saving the manpower of tourism institutions. "It is necessary to increase the lead time for team ticket reservations. Most scenic spots in Europe allow travel agencies to make team reservations 21 days to 3 months in advance, and with the addition of official tour guide service fees, the final team ticket price is basically the same as the individual ticket price."
For ordinary tourists, staggered travel is still a more realistic choice compared to flocking to Beijing and booking a visit to the Forbidden City during the summer. "Since the beginning of this year, there have been too many tourists coming to Beijing! The Forbidden City is a cultural relic protection unit, and everything from cultural relics to walls and floor tiles is protected. Flow restrictions may be the norm, and it would be better to stagger the peak of travel." A tourism practitioner suggested that tourists who are truly interested in the Forbidden City can also visit famous paintings, digital artifacts, and other items of the Forbidden City through the "Palace Museum" mini program, and have a better understanding of the collection before visiting in person.
The mini program page of the Palace Museum. Mobile screenshot
