Travel blogger, trapped in a siege

In the Internet age, travel bloggers face the challenges of content creation, inequality between costs and income, and fierce competition. Their lives are not as glamorous as they appear on the screen, but full of hardships and uncertainties.

The summer tourist season has begun.

To cope with the peak, government agencies at all levels and local cultural and tourism departments have introduced more convenient policies. The State Administration of Cultural Heritage recently issued a notice on museums in the summer of 2024, requiring key and popular museums to meet the public's growing demand for visits through various means such as extending opening hours, cloud exhibitions, and cloud live broadcasts. Many cultural and tourism bureaus announced that they would cancel the reservation requirements for entry to local scenic spots and open them fully.

Data from the top domestic OTA platforms can directly reflect the popularity of summer travel. According to Ctrip data, the search popularity of domestic hotels and air tickets during the summer has increased by more than 20% year-on-year; according to Qunar data, the number of outbound air ticket bookings during the summer has increased by 1.6 times year-on-year; Tuniu data shows that among the users who traveled in July 2024, domestic long-distance travel accounted for more than 50%.

Before the peak season arrives, there is a piece of news in the field of tourism content that is quite eye-catching - the world-renowned travel guide brand "Lonely Planet" announced that it will close its China office and terminate its Chinese publishing business.

Since 2013, Lonely Planet has launched more than 300 Chinese travel guides and reading materials in China, with cumulative sales of millions of copies, but its popularity on the Internet is now extremely limited: the total number of travel notes on Xiaohongshu exceeds 66.7 million, and the number increases by one million per day during the peak season. There are only about 30,000 notes about Lonely Planet; from 2023 to 2024, Lonely Planet's WeChat index was at the level of 30,000-50,000, and it suddenly rose to one million due to the closure of its Chinese business. This value is less than one percent of the WeChat index of the keyword "travel".

Many netizens commented on social media that the slow-paced, in-depth tours recommended by Lonely Planet are not suitable for the domestic tourism environment, and that the pace of publishing cannot keep up with the speed of information updates in the domestic tourism market.

Compared with the professional editorial team of Lonely Planet, people are paying more attention to travel bloggers who can provide interesting stories, fresh strategies and visually impactful pictures. After the special period, more and more people have poured into this field, and with it comes the involution of content creation. Many bloggers enter with the fantasy of "making money while traveling", but soon they will feel the imbalance between cost and income and the current situation of fierce competition, and then leave due to the dual embarrassment of data and livelihood.

The real life behind the screen of travel bloggers is not romantic. While enjoying the freedom brought by travel, they must accept more unfreedom.

01 The treasure is not small

Finding unique scenery is a travel blogger's daily routine.

For example, the B station up master "Terminal 77" with 643,000 followers edited his two trips to western Sichuan to shoot the Rizhao Jinshan into a "serial".

In November 2022, 期末77 released a video titled "Never Go to Western Sichuan with Your Boyfriend", telling the story of how he took his girlfriend to a plateau pass to wait for the sunrise at Jinshan Mountain, and his girlfriend suffered from altitude sickness and felt unwell. The two also encountered continuous rain and only captured a few minutes of the sunrise at Jinshan Mountain. This video uses a comparison picture of his girlfriend as the cover and has been played more than 720,000 times. In August 2023, 期末77 released "Never Go to Western Sichuan with Your Boyfriend Again", telling the story of how he took his girlfriend to Western Sichuan for the second time and finally captured the long-awaited sunrise at Jinshan Mountain. The more shocking images have brought the video to nearly 2 million views.

The two videos of the final 77 are both 26 minutes long, which together are about half a movie, and the experience is full of ups and downs: the road to the observation deck is closed, and they are suddenly hit by hail after going up the mountain; the drone explodes and falls on a tree dozens of meters high on the other side of the river, and they ask for help from a local Tibetan boy to climb the tree and take it down; when the sun rises at Jinshan Mountain, the camera pulls away, and behind the two people and the car are towering snow-capped mountains and floating clouds, and the setting sun shines on the Gongga Peaks, known as the "King of Shu Mountains".

At the Rizhao Jinshan moment, the screen was filled with wish lists such as "pass the postgraduate entrance examination", "get promoted and get a raise", "everything goes well", "find a partner", etc. There were so many of them that they were enough to block out the scenery on the screen. Making wishes in front of unique scenery, especially scenery that the up-host had taken after many twists and turns, is a "traditional skill" of Bilibili users. Rizhao Jinshan is a typical example of this.

This shows users' preference for content in the tourism field.

From Lonely Planet to Mafengwo, Qiongyou.com and other travel guide platforms, most of them are graphic guides, and most of their audiences are in-depth travel enthusiasts or people with corresponding itineraries. The popular content now is vlogs that combine stories, emotions, pictures and guides, which can be appreciated even if you don't have a purpose for traveling.

The blogger "Dreamer Jiang Shiyi" is a typical case.

Jiang Shiyi has about 2.2 million, 840,000, 1.3 million, and 1.04 million fans on Douyin, Kuaishou, Bilibili, and Xiaohongshu, respectively. Most of her videos are about one minute long, and the content is mainly landscape pictures, shooting, and travel processes, with concise and emotional copywriting, creating a prose-like effect, with a distinct personal style. On Douyin, her video of the sunrise at the seaside with a Weilong spicy bar advertisement has received nearly 2.5 million likes.

Beautiful pictures are one of the factors for Jiang Shiyi's success. Jiang Shiyi was originally a photographer. Since 2020, she has started to publish videos about self-taught photography. But whether it is 期末77, Jiang Shiyi, or other travel bloggers, it is not easy to take ideal pictures. In addition to equipment costs and technical requirements, bloggers also need to face the uncertainty of the itinerary, such as the impact of weather on the picture.

More importantly, the travel field is becoming increasingly crowded. Even for a less common scenery like Rizhao Jinshan, relevant content is now overwhelming. According to Haike Finance, there are more than 890,000 notes about Rizhao Jinshan on Xiaohongshu, covering almost all domestic snow-capped mountains, including Meili Snow Mountain, Gongga Snow Mountain, and Mount Everest, as well as Mount Fuji, the Alps, and Mount Kilimanjaro abroad.

In other words, the scenery on earth is limited, but the demand for travel bloggers is unlimited.

This makes the originally niche and treasure-hidden places no longer inaccessible.

Take Lengkacuo, a scenic spot in western Sichuan, for example. Lengkacuo is not a mature scenic spot. "Never Go to Western Sichuan with Your Boyfriend Again" mentioned that vehicles cannot drive directly to Lengkacuo. Tourists need to hike for 2-3 hours or ride a horse for 1 hour to reach the destination. You should know that there is a 4-kilometer outdoor hiking route from the drop-off point to the Lengkacuo Lake. The starting point of the hike is nearly 3,700 meters above sea level, and the route needs to climb nearly 1,000 meters, which is extremely difficult. And such a difficult-to-reach viewing spot now has more than 20,000 notes on Xiaohongshu alone.

All kinds of bloggers on the Sichuan-Tibet line can be called "the king of volume".

The Sichuan-Tibet Highway, or National Highway 318, was once a sacred place in the minds of many travel enthusiasts. There was a saying that "you must drive 318 in your lifetime". But now, traffic jams have begun to appear on 318 during the peak summer season. Self-driving, cycling, and hiking have become routine. There are also many strange ways of traveling on 318, such as pulling carts, riding tricycles, riding horses, and pushing tires. Related live broadcasts have become an industry.

The travel blogger "Crazy Fat Donkey" with 2.85 million followers on Douyin has a large number of videos about the strange people he met on 318, such as two sisters driving an RV with their disabled bedridden brother on 318, a young man riding a second-hand "28-bar" bicycle for 60 yuan into Tibet, and a young man entering Tibet on an electric skateboard.

This is enough to illustrate the popularity of popular topics, and it is extremely difficult to create refreshing works.

02 Difficulty in Income Freedom

Almost all travel bloggers cannot avoid the word "freedom" when talking about their travel destinations.

The life trajectory of blogger "Ding Jianyi is shining" can be considered typical.

After graduating from university, Ding Jianyi started her life in Beijing, working in Internet user operations in Beijing, and also managing her own self-media account after work. The arrival of the epidemic made her rethink the meaning of the Internet 996 work style. She finally chose to quit her job at the end of 2022 and decided to transform her account from a workplace blogger to a travel blogger. In early 2023, she moved out of Beijing, quickly got a driver's license, bought a motorhome, and then started a self-driving trip with her boyfriend.

Ding Jianyi labeled himself as "a couple born in the 1990s who ended their seven-year drifting in Beijing and traveled half of China in half a year." The 64 videos updated on Douyin constitute a "quit to travel" compilation, which has accumulated more than 2.55 million views so far.

Like many bloggers, Ding Jianyi also made the 318 self-driving trip the focus of her journey, but the data performance of the videos was not ideal - most of these works only had a few hundred likes, and only one video about a retired soldier riding an electric tricycle to Tibet reached 2,500 likes. She told Haike Finance that the account data grew rapidly during that period because she encountered the live broadcast of Crazy Fat Donkey, which had a significant traffic-generating effect.

According to Ding Jianyi's calculations, one video of Crazy Donkey could earn enough to buy a mobile phone just through the rewards of Douyin's mid-video plan. She and her boyfriend traveled together, spending an average of 10,000 yuan per month, but their cumulative income in half a year was only 30,000 yuan, including 16,000 yuan in mid-video plans and live broadcasts, and more than 10,000 yuan in advertising cooperation income. They spent 182,000 yuan to buy a second-hand RV, and sold it at a price of 50,000 yuan lower. Ding Jianyi lost 80,000 yuan in half a year as a travel blogger.

From the popular resignation letter in 2015, "The world is so big, I want to see it", to the popular "Life is a wilderness" and "Brave people enjoy the world first" in 2023, social media has magnified the value and significance of travel, as if all the unsatisfactory things in life can be solved by traveling. People see the beauty of the wilderness, but ignore the cost of the wilderness and the other shackles it brings.

Take Ding Jianyi for example, her journey was not easy.

Ding Jianyi and her boyfriend both come from ordinary families, and they rely on their hundreds of thousands of yuan in savings from their previous work in Beijing. After buying a motorhome, camera, drone and other equipment, the remaining amount is obviously not enough. In addition to the necessary expenses such as fuel, tolls, and food, Ding Jianyi saves as much as possible: she tries to find free parking places, does not go to attractions that require tickets unless necessary, and pays more attention to the scenery on the road; she cooks for herself most of the time, and goes to the vegetable market to replenish supplies every time she arrives in a town; when a drone exploded and fell into a ravine on the way, the two of them went into the unfamiliar mountains and forests to search for several hours.

There are many bloggers like Ding Jianyi who quit their jobs because they were tired of them and seek the meaning of life through traveling, but they have to face the fact that traffic and income are limited. Ding Jianyi now has 59,000 fans on Douyin and less than 10,000 on Xiaohongshu.

Blogger "Beijing Explosion Du" is also an example.

Beijing Baodu said in the video that after she quit her job, she spent 500,000 yuan to buy and renovate a motorhome, shot hundreds of gigabytes of footage, and only released two videos, earning zero income. Soon, "Woman quit her job to become a travel blogger with hundreds of thousands of dollars invested and zero income" became a hot search on Weibo, and the number of likes on the original video soared to 330,000. But as the popularity faded, the number of likes on her travel videos also fell back to a few hundred to a few thousand, and she currently has 111,000 followers on Douyin.

Hot-selling products can bring growth, but they are difficult to maintain long-term success, and it is particularly difficult to monetize the traffic.

The B station up master "MadQ" with 104,000 fans mentioned in the video that when he had only four or five thousand fans, he released a popular Chongqing guide video with more than 1 million cumulative views, which prompted him to decide to become a full-time travel blogger; however, after being a full-time blogger for one year, he and his assistant lost a total of 320,000 yuan in 2023 after deducting costs from their income.

03 The essence is the future

The common monetization paths for bloggers are platform subsidies, advertising cooperation, e-commerce sales and knowledge payment. However, for mid-level travel bloggers and below, e-commerce sales and knowledge payment are too difficult, platform subsidies are getting smaller and smaller, and there are not many opportunities for advertising cooperation.

For example, Douyin blogger "Bella in Beijing", who has 76,000 followers, counted her 28-day trip, which included fuel, tolls, accommodation, tickets, meals, etc., costing a total of 16,000 yuan, but the income from the video subsidy was only 2,755 yuan. She said in the video that she drove and visited scenic spots during the day, and edited videos at night, which was time-consuming and laborious, and she couldn't get a hit, and the income was not as high as the videos she casually shot at home.

A global travel blogger on Xiaohongshu has visited 67 cities in 19 countries, posted dozens of notes, has only 10,000 followers, and has not received a single advertising cooperation order from June 2023 to June 2024.

For example, Xiaohongshu user "Chen Sanshi" posted a note titled "How difficult it is to be a travel blogger". This note, which received only 14 likes, attracted nearly 200 comments that resonated with people. User "Lynn Ni Ni" complained about her own experience in the comment section: it took three months, cost 50,000 yuan, traveled to six countries, and earned 150 yuan.

Following the trend is also a way to capture traffic, just like many travel bloggers flocked to Zibo and Harbin. It’s just that popular places have higher traffic, but the content is likely to be the same; unpopular places have low traffic, and the hits are rare. The high cost and involution of content have led many bloggers to choose "faking" - specific angles and photo editing are common routines. Xiaohongshu has been on the hot search for "photo fraud". If the attractions within your reach lack popularity, they are given various names that are familiar to users, such as "Little Kamakura", "Little Maldives" and "Little Switzerland".

As the recovery of the tourism industry accelerates, the field of travel bloggers is also evolving and leaping. According to data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, in the first quarter of 2024, the number of domestic tourists reached 1.419 billion, a year-on-year increase of 16.7%; the total travel expenditure of domestic tourists reached 1.52 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17.0%. According to data from research organization QuestMobile, from January to April 2024, the number of commercial content collaborations between Xiaohongshu platform and typical online travel platforms increased by more than 50 times year-on-year.

However, it is difficult to balance content quality and revenue. For example, MadQ mentioned in a video that when making content, all attractions and routes must be experienced and fully evaluated to ensure the authenticity and practicality of each guide video; they are more cautious about advertising cooperation, fearing that advertising will affect content quality and fan sentiment. This can easily lead to revenue failing to cover costs.

The cooperation between local cultural tourism and Internet platforms has provided some possibilities for travel bloggers. For example, the Douyin platform held a press conference with Dali on "There is a kind of life called Dali", Kuaishou cooperated with Luoyang to launch the "My hometown is fun·Luoyang Station" event, and Yunnan and Xiaohongshu jointly created the "Be a Spiritual Villager" event, which invited 100 Xiaohongshu bloggers from all over the country to go deep into Diqing and Nujiang areas for "village tours" to experience new products of summer cultural tourism.

For some people who value "travel" more than "blogging", travel blogger is not just a profession or a way to make money, but a kind of life attitude.

The up master "春雨梦游记" with 265,000 followers on Bilibili joked in a video that she "earns 1,800 yuan a month and laughs every day." She saves money from freelancing to travel for two months every year, and her videos are updated only once a month. Despite the low update frequency, her videos are very popular with users. For example, the most recent content was released on May 22, telling the story of a boy who lost both arms and one leg on the road. This video has been played 2.76 million times.

Ding Jianyi ended her journey at the end of 2023. After selling her RV, she used the remaining savings to run a homestay in Jixian County, Tianjin. The content updated on her account now is basically the operation of the homestay and her own life experience. Since opening the homestay, she has never traveled again. She told Haike Finance that she would continue to travel if she had the opportunity in the future. She did not give up "freedom" and named the homestay "Mountain and Freedom".

Life and travel under the spotlight have been turned into traffic codes by bloggers for the public to watch and consume, so data has become the KPI to measure the success of travel, and travel has become another form of work. Now, travel bloggers may just be a beautiful vision created by the Internet, and only by letting go of the obsession of deliberately creating travel scenes can we truly return to the essence of travel and the freedom that bloggers pursue.