One XX brings a city to the fore, three major paths for cultural tourism marketing to become popular

This article explores in depth the three major paths to success in cultural tourism marketing: how a person, a dish, or a drama can make a city popular. Through specific case analysis, the article reveals the logic and sustainability issues behind these phenomena. By reading this article, you will gain a new understanding of the trend of cultural tourism marketing, and hopefully it will be helpful for you to grasp the development of the cultural tourism industry.

Not long ago, the internet celebrity "Guo Youcai" became popular overnight and gained tens of millions of followers in two days. He was then criticized as a "cancer" and then disappeared as if he had never existed.

Among them, Heze Tourism, which took advantage of Guo Youcai's traffic and cleared out Heze South Station overnight, was caught in the middle. The short life of the Internet celebrity career also makes people wonder whether the tourism industry brought by Internet celebrities can live long.

Heze South Railway Station demolition site Source: Weibo user

Judging from the hot urban tourism in recent years, "one XX brings a city to the fore" has become a trend. Here, XX can be a person who resonates with the public, a meal with regional characteristics, or an excellent film or TV series.

However, judging from the phenomenon of internet celebrity cities becoming popular, perhaps not all “one XX makes a city popular” can be sustainable. So what is the optimal solution for urban cultural tourism?

1. One person can make a city popular, but emotions are not the basis of city marketing

Speaking of "one person making a city popular", there are already three people who can be nominated in the first half of 2024.

The first phenomenal internet celebrity @开封王婆-赵梅, with her superb control and humorous words, made blind dates, a traditional activity that most young people are reluctant to attend, lively and interesting. Her fans also increased rapidly with the explosion of short videos on Douyin. According to the huge calculation, Wangpo gained 5 million fans in ten days from March 21 to March 31, and a net increase of 1.11 million fans per day during the peak period.

@开封王婆-赵梅 fans net increase trend Data source: huge amount of calculations

The popularity of Wang Po in Kaifeng has also boosted the development of the tourism economy in the scenic area and the surrounding areas. According to the "2024 Qingming Festival Tourism Forecast Insights" released by Ctrip, Kaifeng has become the third "dark horse tourism destination" during the Qingming Festival with a year-on-year increase of more than five times in orders. However, Kaifeng's cultural tourism is relatively calm about Wang Po. It has only opened a special bus line for the scenic area and held a special meeting on cultural tourism work in the city.

The second one is the rapper Nomi, who inexplicably turned the fitness equipment in Yulin Qixiang Community in Wuhou District, Chengdu into the "Chengdu Disneyland". In his song, he sang "I want to diss you", and used the seesaw in the community as the MV screen, turning an ordinary old community into a popular check-in spot loved by young people overnight.

After Chengdu Disney became popular, Image source: @听月娱乐

Although this online carnival did not drive up the surrounding tourism data as much as Wang Po did, it definitely made Chengdu popular in a different way. In order to prevent the check-in crowd from disturbing the public, the local government specially invited community workers to build fences to allow people to diss in a civilized and orderly manner.

The third person who made the local area popular was Guo Youcai, who was mentioned at the beginning of the article. He became an Internet celebrity with a cover song with a retro filter. But as everyone knows, Guo Youcai's character as an inspirational rural guy was exposed as a false packaging. Even though Heze Tourism quickly built roads with a "fan-loving" attitude, it was still forced to give up Guo Youcai's "huge wealth" and let everything return to peace.

Looking at the popular online celebrities this year, it is not difficult to find that the most fundamental starting point of the "one person makes a city popular" model is that people inspire the emotional resonance of short video users . Wang Po hits the young people's love for fun blind dates, imitates Nomi's MV to give young people an emotional outlet for "going crazy", and Guo Youcai draws empathy with inspirational stories.

Regardless of whether the platform deliberately packages it or the audience spontaneously supports it, the tourism economy driven by emotions will never last long . It is limited by the ups and downs of short video dissemination and the small audience. It cannot be deeply integrated with local characteristics and can only become cannon fodder in urban marketing attempts.

However, this model is not without successful cases. For example, Litang, which was popularized by Ding Zhen and Pearl in 2020, still maintained a year-on-year growth of 66.7% in tourism revenue in 2023. But it is worth noting that Litang's success is also inseparable from official endorsement, and it does not rely on a single emotional anchor point to go viral.

2. A dish makes a city popular. Behind the food is sincerity.

Of course, a dish that has also risen through the spread of short videos can also easily make a city popular. The most typical cases in the past two years are the barbecue in Zibo, Shandong and the spicy hot pot in Tianshui, Gansu.

Zibo's popularity first came from the gratitude of college students, but on the short video platform, the most impressive thing in the special forces-style travel of college students is Zibo's barbecue. The same food has different ways of eating in different regions, and the way to eat Zibo pancakes with green onions and meat skewers undoubtedly tempts the taste buds of the audience through the screen.

Image source: Xiaohongshu@Ms. Lin

Many people say that among the tourist cities that became popular due to short videos, Zibo, which is relatively long-lived, has only been popular for half a year. However, this year, Zibo still won the hearts of many tourists during the short holidays. Although the popularity of "going to Zibo for a re-baking" during the Qingming Festival and the May Day holiday is not as high as the peak period in 2023, it has far exceeded the initial period of last year's explosion.

Zibo barbecue keyword comprehensive index Data source: Juliang Suanshu

Another city that is famous for its food is Tianshui. Who would have thought that a 7-second video of spicy hot pot by netizen "a cup of Liangbaikai" would become Tianshui's traffic code.

Douyin @Yibeiliangbaikai released a video

The video had over a million interactions within a week, and "Tianshui Malatang" became a hot topic on major social platforms. A month later, a video of a Malatang owner being reminded by the Tourism Bureau to pay attention to facial expression management also made Tianshui Malatang even more popular. This small city in Gansu finally ushered in overwhelming wealth.

Under the urging of netizens, the Tianshui Culture and Tourism Bureau of Gansu Province responded quickly. Not only did they paint the walls overnight to welcome tourists with a brand new city look, they also set up a free pick-up point for out-of-town tourists at the airport high-speed rail station, and opened a Malatang bus line for tourists. According to data released by the Tianshui Culture and Tourism Bureau, from March this year to the end of the May Day holiday, Tianshui's comprehensive tourism income reached 2.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 67.2%.

The popularity of a dish has nothing to do with emotions, but it activates people's curiosity with the novel experience of taste buds and connects food with local customs and culture .

Behind the popularity of Zibo and Tianshui, people see not only a dish full of regional characteristics, but also the local people's love for life and their sincerity in welcoming tourists . Harbin also impressed tourists with its sincerity. Although Harbin did not become popular because of unexpected traffic, its long-term layout of urban cultural tourism marketing also won the favor of tourists.

Creating a tourism economy through food may not be a path that can keep a place popular for a long time, but it can still attract tourists during holidays and other nodes, which can be regarded as an achievement . From this perspective, Zibo is the best example. After a year, there are still tourists "off-peak" travel, which can also bring a second spring to the local tourism economy.

3. A drama brings popularity to a city, using rich formats and high traffic

The last path to urban cultural tourism explosion is the high energy brought by a drama.

A TV series makes a city popular, which is not a new way for tourism to break out of the circle. From the popularization of Dali in Yunnan by "Go Where the Wind Is", to the public's attention to Jiangmen in Guangdong in "The Storm", to the recent mini-series "My Altay" with over 100 million effective online views on the final day, which made Xinjiang region once again included in the list of travel destinations, the power of TV series is evident.

The number of views of My Altay on the final day. Data source: Maoyan Movie

It is understood that after the broadcast of "Go Where the Wind Runs", the number of tourists on the Ancient Tea-Horse Road in Fengyang County increased by as much as ten times, and the local Cultural and Tourism Bureau gave the drama a subsidy of 2 million yuan to show its recognition. Dali has always been a tourist city. Yunnan, which already has beautiful scenery as a tourism foundation, is even more beautiful with the blessing of the drama. After the broadcast of "My Altay", the total number of broadcasts on the entire network exceeded 6 billion times, and the number of bookings for the route from Urumqi to Altay increased by more than 50% month-on-month .

Judging from the content-related words of "There is Wind" and "Altay" on Douyin, the entries that are most relevant to the dramas are all the filming locations of the dramas , which is also one of the proofs that the dramas have made the cities popular.

"Go to a Windy Place" and "My Altay" Content Related Words Data Source: Juliang Suanshu

Yu Jie, member of the Party Leadership Group and deputy director of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Department of Culture and Tourism, believes that "Altay has become popular because of the drama, which has magnificent natural scenery, splendid ethnic customs and vivid scenes of exchanges and integration among various ethnic groups that attract tourists." The beautiful scenery and the leisurely life in the local area are one of the reasons why the drama can leverage the tourism economy.

If Xinjiang wants to turn "traffic" into "retention", it needs to further enrich the tourism industry and polish the golden signboard of "Xinjiang is a good place". This is also what the two cultural tourism development paths of "one person" and "one dish" have overlooked.

At the beginning of this year, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television launched the "Travel with Micro-Short Dramas" creative initiative, making the popular micro-short dramas one of the bases for leveraging the tourism economy in various places. In addition, with the vigorous promotion of travel variety shows by major platforms, film and television variety shows have also strengthened cooperation with local governments, allowing the tourism industry to gain high traffic and official endorsement.

"Travel with short dramas"

Judging from the continued popularity of the first two ways of cultural and tourism going viral, the rise of the tourism industry in internet celebrity cities often relies on temporary traffic, which is not only prone to the drawbacks of "overtourism" , but is also limited to short-term benefits and unable to achieve long-term development.

The series not only brings tourism enthusiasm, but also attracts great attention from the Bureau of Culture and Tourism, which deeply integrates marketing and industry, focuses on seizing the benefits of short-term traffic , and pays more attention to the long-tail effect of the tourism industry .

Author: TOP Jun; Source public account: TopMarketing (ID: 1082248)