How to travel to mega cities and rural areas? After more than 10 on-site visits, this team has made the following suggestions: | Operation during summer practice | Rural | Field visits
How to travel to rural areas in mega cities? Four students from Shanghai Business School formed a summer social practice team - the "Sparking Fire" team, which visited Wufang Village in Fengxian District multiple times to conduct in-depth research on the development process, land transfer, and operation mechanism of Wufang Village.
The four students who are also about to enter their third year of college come from different majors - Feng Yunfei in Hotel Management, Chen Ziyi in Tourism Management, Zheng Danping in Business Administration, and Lu Jiaxin in Accounting. Their different professional backgrounds provide them with different perspectives and help them use the analytical tools they have learned in their respective majors to put forward their own suggestions and start trying them out.
Combining "online+offline"
Understanding the current situation of suburban areas in mega cities is the first step in this summer social practice.
Zheng Danping communicated with the staff of Yumu Garden Cafe.
The social practice team adopts a combination of online and offline methods for research. On the one hand, the team conducted more than 10 on-site inspections of Wufang Village and had conversations with nearly 50 tourists and local villagers during the inspection process, collecting information on the development status of Wufang Village from different perspectives. On the other hand, the online Wenjuanxing platform has released questionnaires, and as of August 3rd, a total of 206 valid questionnaires have been collected. During the same period, online interviews were conducted with 10 young people aged 16-28 to provide suggestions for the future development of Wufang Village based on the collected effective information.
Team members Lu Jiaxin and Zheng Danping analyzed the collected effective data using validity analysis, multi-dimensional decomposition analysis, PEST analysis, and other methods. The respondents to the questionnaire were mainly young people aged 18-25. In terms of rural tourism willingness, 14.56% of 206 people are completely willing, with 35.92% being relatively willing and 35.92% being generally willing. It can be seen that the overall willingness of the survey subjects to rural tourism is very high. Secondly, out of 206 people, 190 have participated in rural tourism, of which half have participated in rural tourism less than three times a year, and 2 have participated in rural tourism more than 10 times a year. Most of them choose to travel to rural areas during holidays or weekends. From this, it can be concluded that people have a high willingness to participate in rural tourism, but the actual number of times they participate in rural tourism is very small, especially for the beautiful environment, low cost of living, and slow paced life in rural areas.
Team members taking a group photo.
In field research, team members found that although Wufang Village has many tourism projects, the entire tourism project in Wufang Village lacks overall planning, and the projects are relatively scattered. There is also no public transportation in the village, and tourists mainly rely on private cars or walking. They often get lost or repeat the same path in Wufang Village, and the tourism experience is not very good.
In response to this pain point, team members Feng Yunfei and Chen Ziyi applied their professional knowledge in tourism management to design three themed routes for Wufang Village from the perspective of tourism destination layout planning. Based on the floor plan of Wufang Village and the layout of the village's buildings and facilities, they were named "Study Tour", "Family Tour", and "Wufang Day Tour", connecting the service facilities of Wufang Village through a themed approach. In addition, the team members are working on creating a brochure with a map of the entire Wufang Village printed on it. At the same time, three themed route maps are also designed to avoid tourists getting lost and repeating the same path in Wufang Village.
The picture shows Chen Ziyi taking a group photo with General Manager Guo and Teacher Lu of Wushi Li Homestay.
"The social practice of college students is to guide them to step out of the school gate, enter society, break away from books, and understand the real world." Team member Lu Jiaxin said, "This social practice, we stepped on the land of Wufang Village to feel the changes in Wufang Village, and more importantly, to feel the changes in China.". "During the summer social practice period, every time I went to Wufang Village, I gained a lot and saw more and more business models joining Wufang Village, injecting new blood into its rural revitalization strategy and stimulating new vitality." Team member Feng Yunfei told reporters that she hopes to combine her knowledge with her experience of multiple visits to propose solutions for the better development of Wufang Village.
Exploring the underlying development mechanism
To develop rural tourism economy, the local operating mechanism is also worth exploring.
After conducting in-depth research, the team members found that ten years ago, Wufang Village was mainly focused on agriculture and had a single industrial structure. With the participation of social enterprises such as Silteng Technology Service Co., Ltd., Wufang Village has deeply explored the characteristics of the yellow peach planting industry resources and formed a "yellow peach+IP" model of "integrated development of primary, secondary, and tertiary industries". Excellent Yichan, the company builds a green planting chain, introduces high-quality and high-yield yellow peach varieties through cooperation with scientific research units such as the Municipal Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and constructs a product safety system; Strengthen secondary production, improve the modern agricultural product processing chain, innovate and develop deep processed products such as yellow peach soda, yellow peach beer, and yellow peach pastries; Revitalizing the tertiary industry, elongating the agricultural and tourism marketing chain, successively creating brand trademarks such as "Wufang Youtao" and "Tianxin CLUB", building an online and offline sales system, introducing commercial platforms such as JD and Hema Fresh, creating a yellow peach e-commerce trading platform, extending the industrial chain with yellow peaches as the pillar, creating a "industry+base+fund+think tank" model, and deeply integrating the yellow peach industry with tourism.
Zheng Danping, Feng Yunfei and Teacher Wang from Hanfu Academy communicated.
At present, the operating platform of Wufang Village, Sierteng Technology Service Co., Ltd., is also vigorously developing its brand in Wufang Village. The brand includes services such as Tianxin Agricultural Market, Tianxin Kitchen, Sierton Barbecue, and Sierton Parent Child Picking Garden. In addition, the Sirteng platform also has a dedicated e-commerce department. During an interview with Ms. Cheng at the Tianxin Agricultural Market, she said, "Tianxin Agricultural Market belongs to the e-commerce department of the Sirteng platform. There are stores on the Taobao app and a WeChat mini program mall, which sell products both online and offline simultaneously, and the products are the same.". At the same time, Silteng Company is also vigorously promoting the tourism development of Wufang Village and providing team resources for research institutions in the park.
"The gray and low farmhouses, as well as the damaged and inconvenient streets, have been transformed and upgraded into one of the first demonstration villages for rural revitalization in Shanghai. Wufang Village has become a new rural area with the characteristics of Shanghai style and the charm of water towns." Summer social practice has made students more grounded. Team member Zheng Danping said that with the introduction of state-owned capital and the establishment of the "Yangtze River Delta Rural Revitalization Fund", Wufang Village has begun to explore new models of urban-rural integration. Through innovative management and operation models, a strategic path has been extracted to empower the diversification of rural tourism formats in the suburbs of large cities through tourism.
Mr. Guo, the responsible person of Wushi Li Homestay, Mr. Wang from Hanfu Academy, and Ms. Lu, the supervising teacher, took a group photo with the team members.
Promoting this operational mechanism will be more conducive to rural revitalization. To this end, the social practice team has created the "Peach Blossom Square" WeChat official account platform, focusing on promoting the perfect infrastructure, rich entertainment projects, various activities, beautiful scenery, etc. of Wufang Village, updating the activities held by Wufang Village and the newly built service facilities in a timely manner, improving the popularity of Wufang Village, and attracting more tourists to visit Wufang Village. At present, the team has preliminarily completed the writing of the "Outline of Wufang Village Tourism Destination Planning and Improvement", which mainly includes the current characteristics, target positioning, construction mode, implementation path, guarantee measures, and other parts of Wufang Village, becoming a part of the team's suggestions for Wufang Village.
