5 cultural tourism marketing cases that will be popular in 2023: From Zibo to Tianjin, where will become the next Harbin?

Phenomenal cases can often provide insights into industry trends. From Zibo to Tianjin, and then to Harbin, all of them reflect the popularity of cultural tourism marketing. This article lists five popular cultural tourism marketing cases to open up new ideas for cultural tourism marketing in 2024.

In 2023, overwhelming wealth will pour down on the cultural and tourism industry.

From the "special forces-style tourism" of college students to the rise of travel methods such as CityWalk; from the crowds of people "going to Zibo to catch the barbecue" and the crowded Tang Dynasty City in Xi'an, to the thousands of "Southern Little Potatoes Bravely Entering the Northeast" during the New Year's Day, to the current official cultural and tourism accounts in various places that are on the hot search list... In 2023, these seemingly inadvertent popular phenomena have not only boosted consumption in local cities, brought huge commercial value to the cities, but also allowed urban cultural and tourism marketing to continue to heat up.

Behind phenomenal cases, we can often see industry trends and reflect people's new changes in travel consumption needs. At the beginning of the new year, Morketing has reviewed the five most popular cultural tourism marketing cases in the past year, hoping to review with everyone how city marketing can be played and open up new ideas for cultural tourism marketing in 2024.

1. College students’ “special forces tourism” helps Zibo barbecue become a top trend

If we talk about the most unexpectedly popular city this year, Zibo must be on the list.

In March last year, the topic of "college students' special forces travel" emerged on Douyin, and Zibo also attracted college students to check in because of its good quality, low prices and abundant food. No one expected that driven by the topic traffic and the college students, Zibo and "Zibo barbecue" quickly became popular all over the country from being ordinary.

For a time, countless internet celebrities, stars, store bloggers and tourists from all over the country rushed to Zibo to experience the people-friendly consumption experience of "small pancake oven plus dipping sauce, soul barbecue three-piece set".

Statistics show that since March, an average of 40,000 tourists have flocked to Zibo every day. During the May Day holiday, direct trains from Beijing to Zibo and more than 80% of local hotels were sold out, and local barbecue restaurants had long queues and were in short supply.

Facing the enthusiasm of the people across the country and the surge in traffic, Zibo Culture and Tourism seized the opportunity of "Zibo BBQ" to go viral, and while leveraging the marketing momentum, it also worked hard to provide services. For example, it launched a "barbecue train" on high-speed trains and a series of "nanny-style policies" to facilitate tourists. It also held a barbecue festival around May Day to create a "Zibo BBQ Season", and at the same time retained more tourists by implementing preferential policies to reduce or exempt scenic spot tickets.

But this is not enough. On April 19, Zibo issued "A Letter to the People of the City", "A Reminder and Warning on Regulating the Pricing Behavior of Operators", etc., ordering barbecue restaurants, hotels, etc. not to raise prices at will, and calling on the whole city to work together to provide tourists with a better travel experience.

It can be seen that the popularity of "Zibo BBQ" is inseparable from the "necessary preparations" of all local parties. It is the traffic dissemination of online social media, the support and promotion of the local government, the active cooperation of local people and the word-of-mouth of tourists that finally led to the phenomenal cultural and tourism hotspot IP of "Zibo BBQ", making "going to Zibo to BBQ" a new trend.

2. Tianjin diving grandpa brings Tianjin to the fore. Emotional marketing is the key

After the "Zibo barbecue", the "Jinjin dance" exploded the entire network, promoting the popularity of Tianjin, the "capital of jokes".

At the end of August and the beginning of September last year, a video of an old man from Tianjin (baibai) diving into the Haihe River went viral on social media platforms, attracting a crowd of young people to check in and watch the old men’s performance. Not only did it make the originally not-so-famous Lion Grove Bridge become Tianjin’s “8A-level internet celebrity scenic spot” in the eyes of netizens, it also attracted tourists from surrounding cities to visit Tianjin.

The diving of the uncles in Tianjin is not ordinary diving: before taking off, they will first perform a stand-up comedy to show their humor, or raise their hands to the sky and shout "I am 'bye-bye', not an uncle!", "The world is full of spring, thank you for the love of the audience", etc. The uncles' carefree and happy appearance also made netizens call them "Tianjin diving uncles, specializing in curing mental exhaustion".

As the popularity of the "Tianjin Diving Grandpa" on the Internet has increased, it is not only the grandpas who come to dive at the Lion Grove Bridge, but also the grandpas, foreign friends, self-media bloggers, and even the diving Olympic champion He Chong. At the same time, private swimming teams from Beijing, Wuhan and other places have also come to Tianjin to "challenge".

On social media platforms, netizens started to make guides for watching the handsome guys diving in Tianjin, accurately showing the time and location of the dives, and offering recommendations for nearby attractions and food to visit after watching the dives. Merchants near the Lion Grove Bridge also began to respond, with vendors selling snacks and drinks soon appearing in the crowd, and recording speakers playing the message "Welcome foreign tourists to Tianjin" on a loop.

In fact, the Lion Grove Bridge is a gathering place for local swimming enthusiasts in Tianjin, and many uncles have been swimming here for many years. It’s just that not so many people paid attention to it before, but now it has become popular quickly after being filmed into a short video and posted on social media platforms.

According to public data, the cumulative number of views of Douyin related topics about Tianjin grandpa diving exceeded 1 billion, the number of views of Kuaishou related content exceeded 180 million, and the number of views of Xiaohongshu related content exceeded 50 million. No wonder some netizens joked that "Zibo tied everyone up with barbecue, and Tianjin tied everyone up with grandpas."

Although "Tianjin uses the old man to tie everyone down" is a joke made by netizens about Tianjin's wave of "sky-dropped traffic", looking beyond the surface, the popularity of the Tianjin diving old man is essentially the result of emotional marketing releasing important value in the field of culture and tourism.

In the current social pressure, young people are more pursuing instant happiness, pleasure, surprise and inner emotional satisfaction. The happiness and humor of the Tianjin diving uncles just hit the emotions of young people, triggering the public's emotional resonance and spontaneous spread. In the short term, this wave of traffic and publicity can attract more tourists to Tianjin and drive the development of surrounding hotels, catering, transportation and other related industries.

In the long run, "Tianjin Diving Uncle" will become a special cultural IP of Tianjin, attracting more attention to the city. This effect will also be continuously internalized into the city's characteristic culture in the future and become one of the driving forces of the local economy.

3. The "Village Super League" event is booming, and Guizhou's cultural tourism has become a new trend

During the Dragon Boat Festival in 2023, Guizhou's "Village Super League", a football match spontaneously organized by the public, quickly became popular, attracting tens of millions of netizens to watch, bringing a wave of sports, cultural and tourism consumption to Rongjiang County and even Guizhou Province.

It is understood that the members of the "Village Super" are mainly from Sanbao Dong Village and its surrounding villages at the junction of urban and rural areas in Chengbei New District, Rongjiang County, Guizhou Province. They are not professional football players, but barbers, restaurant owners, truck drivers, etc. The prizes of the competition are only agricultural products such as chickens, ducks, and pork. Everyone actively participates in the "Village Super" simply because of their love for football and the pursuit of happiness.

However, it is precisely this pure and down-to-earth quality that has given "Village Super" a broad mass base. Through various short video platforms, the content of "Village Super" continues to ferment on the Internet, allowing users to actively or passively receive relevant information. Many users will actively complete the whole process from "planting grass" to "pulling grass", that is, going to watch the game during the game and deeply experience the local customs and people.

As the attention to the "Village Supermarket" increased, local cultural and tourism departments quickly seized the opportunity to launch various types of tourism packages to provide tourists with travel experiences and services.

In the end, this folk sports activity that was originally developed by local farmers turned into a phenomenal rural cultural and sports activity that everyone participated in, which greatly stimulated cultural and tourism consumption in some villages in Guizhou. According to public data, during the Dragon Boat Festival, the comprehensive tourism income of Rongjiang County alone reached 444 million yuan.

While the "Village Super League" event has become a new name card for Guizhou, Guizhou's cultural and tourism industry has also seen a huge increase. During the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, going to Rongjiang to watch a "Village Super League" and sightseeing in Guizhou has become the first choice for many foreign tourists. On the Ctrip platform, the number of holiday product orders in Qiandongnan Prefecture during the Dragon Boat Festival increased by more than 150% year-on-year, among which Guizhou's Dong ethnic group's big songs, intangible cultural heritage batik, long table banquets and other unique folk cultures have also become more well-known.

4. Earning nearly 6 billion yuan in revenue in 3 days, small potatoes from the south ventured into the Northeast

"It's not that I can't afford to go to Europe, but Harbin is more cost-effective." During the three days of New Year's Day, Harbin was "crazy". Not only did it continue to dominate the hot searches on major social platforms, it also triggered a wave of ice and snow tourism.

In fact, on the eve of New Year's Day, popular content about Harbin tourism continued to appear on major social media platforms. Hot topics such as "Southern Little Potatoes", "Potato Princess", and "Pleasant City Style" quickly became popular and became topics of discussion among young people across the Internet.

With the support of traffic from various sources, the city of Harbin has rapidly become popular on the Internet, and the Ice and Snow World has become the most popular check-in spot for Internet celebrities.

In order to entertain tourists from all over the country, Harbin has also come up with a lot of "tricks". For example, a symphony concert was moved into the mall, an artificial moon and hot air balloons were put on stage, frozen pears, free sugar water, sweet tofu pudding were placed on the plate, the Oroqen people led reindeer to walk on the central street, and Harbin citizens took the initiative to volunteer to give free rides to tourists from other places, just to let the "small potatoes in the south" feel the greatest sincerity.

This fancy tourist attraction has indeed reaped tangible benefits. According to the "2024 New Year's Day and New Year's Eve Tourism Report" released by Ctrip, Harbin's three-day New Year's Day holiday tourism orders increased by 158% year-on-year. The sudden increase in passenger flow has brought unprecedented bustle and prosperity to the city. According to official statistics from the Harbin People's Government, Harbin received a total of 3.0479 million visitors during the New Year's Day holiday, and the total tourism revenue reached 5.914 billion yuan.

5. Local cultural and tourism bureaus are overwhelmed by the “fancy activities”

Since the beginning of 2024, the most competitive national units must be the local cultural and tourism bureaus. In recent days, as Harbin continues to go viral, netizens from all over the country have called on the cultural and tourism bureaus in their hometowns to "copy homework." The local cultural and tourism bureaus also focus on "listening to advice" and "responding to requests", not only meeting everyone's various requests, but also competing online.

For example, Shandong Tourism took the lead in shouting "Come to Shandong, hospitable Shandong, we will spoil you"; Henan Tourism adopted the "sea of ​​questions" strategy while showing off its killer "beauty plan" to attract tourists and giving away diamonds to spoil fans; Hebei Tourism directly asked Zhao Liying to stand on the platform and shouted "I will carry the banner for Hebei Tourism"; Shanxi Tourism's editor did not sleep at all and churned out a promotional video every 5-10 minutes...

According to incomplete statistics from netizens, 28 of the 34 first-level administrative regions in the country have participated in this crazy cultural and tourism competition. Through this cultural and tourism competition, local cultural and tourism departments have actually obtained high traffic and high attention through low-cost publicity.

In this process, the cultural and tourism department changed the stereotype in everyone's mind and acted as a "conspicuous bag" to play with netizens, which not only maximized the emotional value, but also gave everyone a reason to choose this city.

From this, it is not difficult to see that the key to the current cultural and tourism marketing is not only service and creativity, but also the ability to accurately capture the psychological emotions and needs of young people and provide emotional value.

As local cultural and tourism bureaus continue to open their doors, a host of internet memes continue to spread on various social media platforms, continuously pushing up the popularity of topics on the platforms and allowing local cultural and tourism industries to receive wave after wave of traffic. This, to some extent, also reflects the importance of making good use of social media platforms in cultural and tourism marketing.

Making good use of social media platforms and creating hot topics that fit the platform's attributes so that users can spontaneously co-create content and form a carpet-style dissemination effect will become a new idea for detonating cultural and tourism marketing.

In 2023, overwhelming wealth will pour down on the cultural and tourism industry.

From the "special forces tourism" of college students to the rise of travel methods such as CityWalk; from the huge crowds of people "going to Zibo to catch the barbecue" and the huge crowds of people in the Tang Dynasty City that never sleeps in Xi'an, to the thousands of "Southern Little Potatoes bravely going to the Northeast" during the New Year's Day, to the official cultural and tourism accounts of various places responding to every request and becoming a hot search...

In 2023, these seemingly unintentional popular phenomena not only boosted consumption in local cities and brought huge commercial value to the cities, but also made the city’s cultural and tourism marketing continue to heat up.

Author: Jennie Gao, WeChat public account: Morketing (ID: Morketing)