A review of the popular cultural and tourism IPs in the past five months this year: the average lifespan is only 25 days

Recently, cultural and tourism IPs have been very popular, but their lifespans vary. The longest lasts less than two months, and the shortest is even less than a week. In contrast, some of the popular IPs last year have continued to be popular this year. The reasons behind this are worth pondering.

Some time ago, Heze, Shandong, gained a large wave of traffic due to an internet celebrity Guo Youcai who suddenly became popular. However, after just 12 days, the traffic was "stopped".

With the enthusiastic response to the TV series "My Altay", the number of travel reservations in Altay, Xinjiang, soared by 370%, and the popularity has not diminished. Since January this year, a bunch of cultural and tourism IPs such as Tianshui Malatang, Kaifeng Wangpo, and Changchun Snow Cake Monkey have become popular. Some have a short "lifespan" like Shandong Heze, and some have a long "lifespan" like Altay, but the average lifespan is only 25 days...

1. Altay may become the longest-lived IP this year

At the beginning of this year, the most popular cultural tourism IP was "ice and snow tourism". From the end of last year to the end of January this year, Harbin's ice and snow tourism has been the hottest topic on major social software, and has brought a series of hot words such as "Southern Little Potato" and "Harbin". According to media data, when the popularity was the highest, Harbin's economy raked in 6 billion in three days on New Year's Day.

However, it has been observed that Harbin's ice and snow tourism IP became popular since mid-December, reaching its peak on January 5, and then began to decline. Before the Spring Festival, Harbin's popularity dropped to daily levels, marketing traffic retreated, and the hot cycle lasted for about one and a half months.

Harbin's popularity has just faded. On February 13, a 7-second life record video posted by a local in Tianshui, Gansu Province suddenly became popular, igniting the Tianshui Malatang economy. According to various statistics, after Tianshui became popular, Tianshui homestay bookings in March increased by nearly 2 times compared with 2023, and the index of the keyword "Tianshui" increased by more than 20 times from March 11 to March 18. The number of dine-in orders for Gansu Tianshui Malatang increased by 140%. As of mid-March, the weekly search popularity of Gansu Tianshui increased to 186%, with a total exposure of 36.6 billion times on the entire network, driving the city's GDP growth by 2%.

Some people even traveled 2,700 kilometers and queued for five hours just to eat Tianshui Malatang... However, by mid-April, the popularity of Tianshui Malatang dropped rapidly. By around May Day, the first batch of Tianshui Malatang restaurants in tourist cities such as Jinan, Guilin, and Rizhao had become hot potatoes, and they all put up signs to sell at a loss. The popularity lasted less than two months.

At the end of January and the beginning of February, an NPC who played the Monkey King in Changchun Zoological and Botanical Park (Journey to the West Theme Park) became popular with the public for his humorous language and his frequent jokes when interacting with tourists. He was affectionately called "Snow Cake Monkey" by netizens because he complained that snow cakes were "too dry and throat-sucking". After the "Snow Cake Monkey" became popular, the Changchun Zoological and Botanical Park scenic area also became popular. In the first two months of this year, the number of tourists received and the operating income increased by 10 times and 9 times year-on-year respectively. The total online commodity transaction volume of Changchun Zoological and Botanical Park increased by nearly 200% year-on-year. Even during the "May Day" holiday, the popularity ushered in a small peak. According to statistics, from May 1st to 3rd, Changchun Zoological and Botanical Park received 245,000 tourists. During the entire May Day period, the number of tourists received by Changchun Zoological and Botanical Park increased by 104% year-on-year.

Up to now, as one of the promotional points of Jilin's cultural tourism, the topic of "Snow Pancake Monkey" can still be seen in local cultural tourism, but it is not as popular as before, and the popularity is mainly concentrated from February to March.

In early May, due to the hit TV series "My Altay", Altay in Xinjiang quickly became well-known to the public. Altay has also become one of the eye-catching IPs of Xinjiang's cultural tourism, and the popularity of local tourism has risen rapidly. According to the director of the Altay Regional Culture, Sports, Radio, Film and Tourism Bureau, the number of tourists received by Altay since May is about 2.67 million, an increase of 80% year-on-year, and the tourism revenue has reached 2.2 billion yuan, an increase of 93% year-on-year.

According to relevant data, since the TV series "My Altay" was broadcast, the search popularity of Altay has increased by 6 times year-on-year, the number of travel bookings for vacation products in Altay has increased by 370% month-on-month, the consultation and registration for Xinjiang tourism products has been advanced by one month, and the number of consultations for Xinjiang RV tourism products has increased by more than 50% compared with the same period last year. At present, the popularity of Altay IP remains unabated, and according to the current situation, the popularity of Altay tourism may reach another peak during the Dragon Boat Festival and summer vacation, and is expected to become the IP with the longest "lifespan" this year.

Stills from My Altay

2. The shortest-lived cultural tourism IP has a lifespan of less than a week

The popularity of Tianshui Malatang has not yet subsided, and Kaifeng, Henan, has also quickly become popular with the IP of "Kaifeng Wang Po". Initially, "Wang Po Matchmaking" was just an interactive performance theater in the Wansui Mountain Wuxia City Scenic Area, and the actor who played Wang Po was called Zhao Mei.

Data shows that on December 15, 2023, the number of followers of "Kaifeng Wang Po" was 10,000, which reached 100,000 on March 3, 2024. Just over 20 days later, on March 31, the number of followers of the account reached 5 million.

With the popularity of Wang Po in Kaifeng, the cultural tourism economy of Kaifeng, Henan has also been boosted. Data shows that during the Qingming Festival, hotel bookings in Henan increased by 201% year-on-year, car rental bookings increased by 241% year-on-year, ticket bookings increased by more than 7 times year-on-year, and hotel bookings in Kaifeng increased by 265% year-on-year, an overall increase of about 10 times compared with last year, and scenic spot ticket bookings increased by 3 times month-on-month. In early April, Wang Po withdrew from the stage due to health problems, and other actors replaced Zhao Mei, but the tickets were still sold out. But after mid-April, the heat began to gradually fade, and the overall heat of the IP lasted about a month.

In early April, a small park in Yulin Qixiang, Wuhou District, Chengdu, unexpectedly became popular with the IP "Chengdu Disney". Although this IP has not been officially recognized, it has brought a lot of popularity to the place.

The incident originated on March 26, when rapper Nomi posted a work "Thank God and Thank the Emperor" on the social platform to complain about the judges who did not recognize his ability. Because the hot word "diss you" in the work is homophonic with "Disney", it was nicknamed "Chengdu Disney" by the public.

As the work spread on the Internet, it quickly attracted a large number of young people to check in and line up to take photos, and a small park was packed with people.

Many businesses have sensed business opportunities and have launched "Disney" peripheral products: fried food sellers have launched a unique "Chengdu Disney Set Meal"; milk tea shops have painted "Chengdu Disney" signposts and recommended new products to customers; power bank companies have urgently distributed shared power banks for tourists to use; seesaws have launched the same model of figurines; the seafood section of Chengdu Hema has launched the new "Crab King" overnight...

However, the influx of tourists also caused troubles to the surrounding residents. Even the check-in point was cordoned off, and many community workers were inside to maintain order. However, as the fourth day of the holiday ended, the popularity of the IP also declined, and the popularity of the IP lasted less than a week.

In May this year, Heze, Shandong Province, became popular because of a man named Guo Youcai. This wave of popularity was also beyond everyone's expectations. It is understood that on May 9, Guo Youcai released a full version of the cover video of "Promise", and his popularity soared. The next day, the live broadcast had a maximum number of online users exceeding 300,000, and the number of fans on the Douyin platform alone exceeded 1 million. By the end of May, this number had reached 13 million.

Later, online fans turned to offline check-ins, and Guo Youcai's live broadcast began to be surrounded by viewers checking in. According to official statistics, before May 17, more than 400,000 people flocked to Heze South Station Square every day.

Heze Tourism immediately seized the opportunity to invite Guo Youcai to be the "Tourism Recommender" for a ready-made cultural and tourism IP, and regarded him as a business card of the city. CCTV and Xinhua News Agency reported positively that Guo Youcai was compared to Zibo's barbecue and Tianshui's spicy hot pot.

To facilitate tourists, around May 14, local authorities in Heze repaired the road surface overnight, added base stations and public toilets, renovated the steps in front of the station, and even repainted the "Heze South Station" sign that had been abandoned for 23 years. However, the popularity lasted only a week before it was stopped by the authorities.

On May 20, Heze South Station issued an announcement: "In view of the fact that the spring college entrance examination, summer college entrance examination, high school entrance examination and other examinations are relatively concentrated from May to July 2024, and there are examination sites in schools near Heze South Station. In order to create a good learning, living and examination environment for the majority of candidates, Heze South Station will no longer hold various cultural and entertainment activities." Although many anchors still don't give up, since May 21, as long as they live broadcast at Heze South Station, their accounts will be blocked for a few hours to a few days, so the venue became the Heze National Flower Expo Park.

At noon on May 26, Guo Youcai announced a four-day suspension of broadcasting, and the popularity of Heze gradually dissipated with the suspension of Guo Youcai's broadcasting, and the IP life lasted about 12 days.

Guo Youcai was live streaming at Heze South Station

3. These IPs have been popular from last year to this year

On January 28, 2023, celebrity Zhao Liying took a set of photos for the magazine "Shangchengshi" showing the traditional costumes of Quanzhou's "Xiepu Women" and hairpins. The photos became popular on the Internet, with searches for the topic of Xiepu Women and hairpins on Douyin and Xiaohongshu reaching 1.7 billion, and at the same time, many people rushed to Quanzhou to check in.

Unlike other IPs, the popularity of Quanzhou Hairpin did not follow a "crying" curve trend, where the popularity began to wane after reaching a certain peak, but instead has been popular from last year to this year.

During this year's Spring Festival, the number of views of topics related to Xiapu women on the Douyin platform exceeded 1 billion; on Xiaohongshu, the number of notes related to hairpins exceeded 420,000. Xiapu Village, famous for its hairpins, received 361,000 tourists, a year-on-year increase of 600%, and tourism revenue exceeded 70 million yuan. Some businesses had a daily turnover of up to 50,000 yuan during the Spring Festival.

By March, the hairpin flower craze had also extended from offline travel photography to an online "haipin flower business" - on e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, more than 2,000 pieces of "Quanzhou hairpin flower guard" accessories were sold per month. Based on the customer unit price of 108 yuan, some merchants earned 200,000 yuan per month from just one SKU. As the "haipin flower fever" swept the entire network, Quanzhou's tourism orders during the "May Day" holiday ranked among the top five popular tourist cities in the country, and inbound tourism orders increased by 100% year-on-year.

The same fate as the hairpins in Quanzhou is also shared by Jingdezhen, Jiangxi. In May last year, a ceramic "Silent Bodhisattva" in the Jingdezhen China Ceramics Museum became popular online because its expression fits the psychological state of today's workers. Many people flocked to Jingdezhen to check in, which also made this city with profound cultural and historical heritage appear in the public eye again.

During the summer of 2023, Jingdezhen jumped to second place in the August hot search list of cultural attractions in the Xiaohongshu cultural tourism industry, on par with "Disney" and "Universal Studios", becoming the hottest small town in China in summer; during the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holidays, it repeatedly appeared on the Douyin rankings; at the end of the year, data from Meituan and Dianping showed that the number of notes with Jingdezhen as the keyword increased by 3 times year-on-year, and tourism consumption bookings increased by 181% compared to 2019.

The popularity brought by the "Silent Bodhisattva" continues this year. Jingdezhen received 558,500 tourists in the three-day Qingming Festival, and achieved a total tourism revenue of 614 million yuan. Compared with the single day of Qingming Festival in 2023 (April 5), the average daily number of tourists received and the average daily tourism revenue increased by 113.93% and 104.83% respectively. During the May Day holiday, Jingdezhen received more than one million tourists every day, an increase of 11.98% over 2019 on a comparable basis, and the total tourism revenue increased by 15.57% over 2019. The number of overnight tourists received increased by 30.68% year-on-year, making it one of the cities with the fastest hotel booking growth during the May Day holiday.

Among the many popular IPs, Guizhou's "Rongjiang Village Super League" must be mentioned. Rongjiang, as one of the last batch of counties in the country to be lifted out of poverty, was originally a place that few people had heard of. "Village Super League" is the abbreviation of the Rongjiang County Rural Football Super League.

On May 13, 2023, the Sanbao Dongzhai Village in Rongjiang County held a football super league with villagers as the main participants. The shocking scene of more than 10,000 people watching the village football super league quickly became popular on the Internet, attracting major mainstream media inside and outside the province to report. Netizens referred to the naming rules of "Premier League" and "Chinese Super League" and called the village football super league "Village Super League" and fashionablely called it "Village FA", corresponding to "Village BA" in Taijiang County. The popularity of "Village Super League" has made the originally unknown small county town suddenly hot, and also boosted the local cultural and tourism economy.

In 2023, the "Village Supermarket" attracted as many as 7.66 million tourists, and the comprehensive tourism income in the same year reached an astonishing 8.4 billion yuan, while the county's GDP that year was only 9.6 billion yuan; the network traffic related to the "Village Supermarket" reached an astonishing figure of 58 billion, with the highest daily traffic reaching 100 million times. Continuing to this year, the "Village Supermarket" is still a hot topic. According to statistics, driven by the traffic of the "Village Supermarket", from May 1 to 4, the county received more than 340,000 tourists and the comprehensive tourism income exceeded 330 million yuan.

Players compete in the "Dream Chasing" Champion Youth Women's Football Charity Match

4. Why do the lifespans of cultural and tourism IPs vary?

According to the latest data from the Asian Travel and Accommodation Big Data Research Institute, the longest lasting popularity of the popular cultural and tourism IPs in the first five months of this year was less than two months, and the shortest was even less than a week, with an average lifespan of only 25 days. On the other hand, some of the popular IPs last year have continued to be popular this year, and the reasons are worth pondering.

1. Personal single point IP, easy to "burn" and difficult to "defend"

Whether it is Wang Po, Guo Youcai, Nomi or Changchun "Snow Pancake Monkey", it seems that they all suddenly appeared in the public eye at an opportunity, became popular for no reason, and at the same time brought popularity to a place.

Compared with local big IPs such as "Hospitality Shandong", "Water Charm Jiangsu", and "So close, so beautiful, go to Hebei on weekends", it seems that individual single-point IPs are more likely to be discussed and spread, and are more likely to resonate with the public and penetrate into the social opinion position of young people. For example, Kaifeng's "Wang Po" just hits the marriage and love problems of the young group; Guo Youcai satisfies the public's imagination of grassroots counterattacks; Nomi's experience can arouse the public's sympathy; Changchun's "Snow Cake Monkey" has a deeper connotation. While the emotionally intelligent and humorous words satisfy people's emotional values, there is also a layer of cultural identity in it.

However, it is difficult for a single point of popularity to bring about a global effect, especially for personal IPs with more outstanding personal willpower, such as Nomi and Guo Youcai. And whether the "Chengdu Disney" IP created by Nomi can be regarded as a real Chengdu local cultural and tourism IP is still under discussion. After all, it has never been officially recognized, but Yulin Qixiang in Wuhou District, Chengdu has indeed been labeled as "Chengdu Disney" by the public.

This kind of popularity is mainly about novelty, and it is difficult to bring long-term effects. Although Guo Youcai's popularity has brought a lot of exposure to Heze, Shandong, and brought huge passenger flow, Guo Youcai's strong personality characteristics attracted more homogeneous people who are eager to rely on the Internet to make a comeback. Therefore, the large number of people pouring into Heze South Station has little effect on the cultural and tourism economy of Heze. On the contrary, its negative impact accounts for a larger part.

However, we cannot deny Guo Youcai's role in promoting Heze, Shandong, nor can we deny that Guo Youcai can serve as a positive IP for Heze's cultural tourism. In fact, Guo Youcai can also use his influence to promote local cultural tourism like Ding Zhen, but there are too many "monsters" around him who are trying to gain traffic, which has backfired on his future.

Kaifeng's "Wang Po" and Changchun's "Snow Cake Monkey" are different from the previous two. They are staff members of the scenic spot themselves, so their popularity will naturally bring popularity to the scenic spot and boost the local cultural tourism economy. However, their personal will will also affect the stability of this IP. The popularity of Kaifeng's "Wang Po" and Changchun's "Snow Cake Monkey" is largely due to their own personal characteristics, which are irreplaceable. Therefore, when Wang Po's actor Zhao Mei left Henan and went to Jiangxi, she also brought a wave of traffic to Jiangxi. After a period of time after Zhao Mei left the scenic spot in Kaifeng, the popularity of the "Wang Po" IP slowly sank.

2. The shelf life of a single IP is too short

Tianshui Malatang has made tourists travel 2,700 kilometers and queue for five hours to eat a bite, and later many Tianshui Malatang stores were sold at low prices. The main reason is that the shelf life of a single IP is too short. Once the public has tasted the novelty, they find it boring and the popularity naturally declines. For example, Jingdezhen has become a "dark horse" with the IP of "Silent Bodhisattva", but it is not only this IP that can attract more tourists and maintain popularity.

Tourists who originally went to Jingdezhen for the "Silent Bodhisattva" found that "no one can leave empty-handed" when they arrived at Jingdezhen. They were also shocked by the profound ceramic culture of Jingdezhen and the free life atmosphere of the "Jingdezhen drifters". The "Silent Bodhisattva" IP is superimposed with a bunch of IPs such as "China's Ceramics Capital", "Purchasing Tourism", "Jingdezhen Drifters", etc. Each of them fits the current public's preferences - personality, culture, emotional consumption, freedom...

Xi'an tourism, which has been at the top of the tourism list from 2019 to this year, also relies on the creation of various IPs, such as "Breaking Bowl of Wine", "Songs of Xi'an People", "Doll Girl", "Tang Dynasty City That Never Sleeps", "Twelve Hours in Chang'an", "The Ancient Capital of Thirteen Dynasties", "Xi'an Intangible Cultural Heritage" and so on. Various IPs are constantly superimposed to keep the local cultural and tourism IP vital.

3. Jiangxi Jingdezhen fits in with the essence of travel

The essence of travel is ultimately a big topic, but it is often difficult to break away from the discussion about it. At present, we can find that while people's demand for travel is becoming more and more vigorous, the pressure of daily life and work is also increasing day by day. Hot words and hot topics such as "involution", "social animals", "urban slaves", and "where can you go to work without going crazy" are often on the lips of the public. And tourism, at this time, seems to have become a way for people to escape from the busyness and daily life, to find the meaning of existence, to release themselves, to find the meaning of life, and to find themselves. For those cultural and tourism IPs that are still popular, such as Altay, Quanzhou Zanhua, and Rongjiangcunchao, they all fit this "opening".

Altay is different from the cramped cities with high-rise buildings. It has a vast world with extremely blue sky, extremely white clouds, and thick green grass. You can just lie on it and listen to the sound of the earth and connect with nature. Unlike the hustle and bustle of the city, you can listen to the true voice of your heart in the vast and quiet nature. Rongjiang Village is a gathering place for the love of ordinary people. Everyone who cannot see their own direction for the time being will be more or less infected by their love, or their love will resonate with their love. Quanzhou hairpin flowers are the pursuit of beauty in every girl's heart. It is commercialized, and its essence is also beautiful.

To sum up, in today's world where local economies must show their capabilities, the "out-of-circle" development of culture and tourism has become the best indicator of political achievements. Directors of cultural and tourism bureaus in various places have even come forward in person just to "put" local culture and tourism in the forefront.

The increasing popularity of local cultural tourism does not seem to be a bad thing, because it brings out the good ones and eliminates the bad ones, forcing local governments to take action to promote high-quality development of tourism and pave the way for domestic tourism to go global. I hope that more long-lived IPs will appear in the future!