Blind box of air tickets, exchange of accommodation, copying of Zibo, who is joining in the fun?

"Blind ticket box", "exchange accommodation", "copy Zibo"... What are the hot topics discussed during the May Day travel carnival? The author of this article will take you to find out.

This May Day, there are more people but less resentment, and everyone is wrapped in an atmosphere of extreme carnival.

College students who had been holding back for three years popularized the style of special forces travel, which quickly "swept" through tourist attractions across the country; niche attractions in Qinhuangdao, Jinhua, Weihai and other places were also discovered and became the best option for family travel; long-distance tours and overseas tours also met the needs of the middle class.

In short, no matter where the destination is, everyone gained satisfaction and excitement from this vacation.

However, the outward manifestation of this satisfaction is not retaliatory high consumption, but the atmosphere of national carnival reflected in the Internet social scene.

This year's May Day holiday is a short holiday that allows people to travel freely after three years. It not only allows long-distance tours, but also provides enough time to travel.

Therefore, people no longer complain about the "buyer show" under the filter of the scenic spots, nor are they indignant about the crowded flow of people. They can even temporarily put aside their resentment about the adjustment of holidays and focus only on the carnival of May Day travel.

In terms of food, affordable but homely barbecue has become the traffic code for this year's May Day holiday. Driven by barbecue, Zibo, Shandong has successfully become one of the most popular tourist cities on the Internet.

As for travel, the once popular blind box air tickets fits the college students' travel motto of "more, faster, better, cheaper" and has become popular again among young groups, even boosting the flow of visitors to niche attractions such as Yanji and Haikou.

In terms of accommodation, exchange accommodation that focuses on zero cost has quietly emerged, which indirectly confirms the spread of the concept of budget travel and has become a new concept emerging among young people.

From avoiding crowds to actively "entering the sea", the tourists who are going crazy obviously have a higher enthusiasm for travel and have more mature expectation management. At the same time, compared with a quiet and leisurely holiday time, a collective and lively carnival outing can better relieve the public's emotions.

01 Travel: "Blind ticket box" is cheap but happy, "short-distance self-driving" is expensive but happy

In terms of travel, around May Day this year, "blind air ticket boxes" suddenly became popular among special forces college students. "Low price + random destination", commonly known as a way to "get the best deal" to experience an unknown, exciting and fresh journey.

In fact, the air ticket blind box is not an innovative way of playing that suddenly emerged.

As early as 2021, apps such as Fliggy, Qunar, Ctrip and Tongcheng launched "blind box air tickets" activities. Since the cities are unknown, the results are bound to be good or bad. Only those who draw well-known cities such as Beijing and Chengdu are considered to have made a lot of money, and more often they are losing money by flying within the same province. Most people complained about it, such as "the time is not good" and "I don't want to go to places I've never heard of", etc.

But around May Day this year, whether it was 18th-tier cities such as Yibin, Hanzhong, and Yongzhou, or cities like Bayannur whose names you might not even be able to pronounce correctly, they all welcomed college student special forces who were finally able to leave school. They could travel whenever they wanted, had more freedom in terms of time, and were more enthusiastic about "paradise-like" niche cities.

On Douyin, the topic #Air Ticket Blind Box# has been played over 830 million times.

"Compared with holiday air tickets that cost thousands of yuan, the 398 yuan air tickets during the May Day holiday are very attractive! Add a few dozen yuan for airport fuel, and you can fly to an unknown city." Xiao Fan is a female college student studying in Tangshan. She won a ticket from Tianjin to Yibin, Sichuan on the China United Airlines app, and arranged a "special forces-style tour" for herself before May Day.

This was the first time Xiaofan heard of the city of Yibin. From the video she posted on the social platform, we can see that in one day, she walked through Yibin Cuiping Mountain, Xuetan Park..., and the next day she went to the neighboring internet-famous city of Leshan. In order not to miss the delicious food, she ate Yibin yanmian, yerba, beef offal fennel... In succession, for her, although Yibin is too niche, it has few tourists and fresh air, which is very suitable for relieving stress.

Compared with the Buddhist exploratory college student special forces like Xiaofan, there are some herd-like special forces who are keen on "making wishes" for new internet celebrity cities.

"Make a Wish" is an option launched by "Blind Box Air Ticket". Every time a consumer blindly draws a destination, a "Wishing City" will also appear. If you do not select the city you like, you can click "Make a Wish" and choose your favorite city.

Yanji, Weihai, Haikou and Liuzhou are all popular new internet celebrity cities in the past two years. They are inseparable from the support of internet celebrity bloggers on social media.

Before May Day, Douyin blogger @羊毛月’s two “blind box air tickets” for the Yanji trip received millions of likes.

Internet celebrities are most afraid of crowded cities, bad food, and unauthentic food. Unlike most Internet celebrities, Yangmaoyue chose to go to local vegetable markets and niche scenic spots, and told about what he saw and heard, attracting countless college students to follow suit and make a wish to "Yanji". His observations and experiences even made some unknown small cities popular, such as Zhangye in Gansu, Yulin and Hanzhong in Shaanxi, and Bayannur in Inner Mongolia, some of which received millions of likes.

College students who are moved by these highly-rated videos will also participate in discussions about blind box travel, look for travel partners, and share travel strategies, eventually forming a hot craze.

In addition to the air ticket blind box, the "short-term rental self-driving" travel service is also very popular. The owner of the Douzhu noticed that during the May Day holiday, the rental price of popular business cars such as Buick GL8, which usually costs 400-600 yuan a day, has quadrupled to more than 1,600 yuan a day, and it is still difficult to find a car. Even if the highway is congested and the price of homestays has increased, it cannot stop the enthusiasm for renting cars for travel.

Ctrip data shows that the average cost of Ctrip's car rental self-driving tour orders exceeds 1,000 yuan, a year-on-year increase of 50%; demand for luxury and comfort car models has increased, with orders increasing by more than 80% year-on-year.

There are two main types of people who take short-distance or pure self-driving trips. One is young white-collar workers with high incomes, and the other is parent-child families. Compared with special forces college students, they pursue higher-quality travel and prefer enjoyment-based vacations, so they will choose short-distance self-driving tours nearby.

After Zibo became popular, Jinan, Yantai and other cities took over the tourism demand from other cities in Shandong. Suzhou is the favorite surrounding garden of white-collar workers in Zhejiang and Shanghai. Tianjin and Qinhuangdao have become dark horse destinations for a large number of tourists from Beijing and Hebei due to the convenience of self-driving tours.

Xiaocheng, a Beijing white-collar worker born after 1995, said that before May Day, he and his friends chose to drive to a small fishing village near Anaya, Qinhuangdao. After a three-hour drive, they can enjoy the seaside resort. Except for the expensive round-trip fare, other expenses are very low, basically around 1,000 yuan.

For them, on the one hand, self-driving time is flexible and private; on the other hand, short trips will not take up the entire vacation, and they can go home one day in advance to "recharge" and rest.

Obviously, whether it is a cheap airplane blind box or an expensive self-driving tour around the area, the core travel sentiment focuses on the concept of "off-peak". The unknown novelty of long-distance travel and the surrounding remote attractions have become a way of "off-peak" travel. Although it is still inevitable to be surrounded by crowded crowds, it is different from the "herd" of popular tourist attractions in the past. Don't worry about any "pseudo-concept" niche. As long as you are on the road, you will get more social topics.

02 Accommodation: 0-cost "exchange travel", self-satisfaction carnival

If eating and traveling are still the expected rules for budget travel, then this year's variety of accommodation is eye-opening.

Needless to say, the "Haidilao" accommodation that is popular on the entire Internet is of course the most fashionable. The more trendy 0-cost "exchange accommodation" model has quietly emerged around May Day and has also become a mode of accommodation that has attracted much attention and praise from young people.

The so-called exchange is that two strangers travel to each other's city, and most importantly, they can live in each other's home for free. There are many popular guide notes under the topic of "Exchange Cities" on Xiaohongshu, each of which can trigger hundreds of comments and has a pageview of up to 460,000.

In traditional concepts, "home" is a very private place. Exchanging residences is not only incredible but also unsafe. However, it is welcomed by young netizens, especially many college students.

First of all, it is indeed cheap. During every consumer holiday, businesses eager to "recover" will follow suit and raise prices. Accommodation prices are usually twice or even more than usual. At this time, the comfortable and convenient "exchange travel" model seems much more cost-effective.

Secondly, exchanging accommodation has also become a kind of "social currency" when traveling in unfamiliar cities. According to the observation of the owner of the website, Changsha, Luoyang, Chengdu, Beijing, Chongqing and other popular cities are more likely to be exchanged.

Zhang Qin, who lives in Chongqing, saw the popularity of Zibo during the May Day holiday. Since he couldn't book a hotel, he started a post on Xiaohongshu saying "Trade Chongqing for Zibo". In exchange, he took clear photos of the location and decoration of his apartment, and finally exchanged for a second bedroom in Linzi in the comment section.

"Although the exchange is not equal, the other party is also a man who looks cheerful. There is no filter when he takes photos of the room, and he does not embellish any flaws in the room when we chat." Zhang Qin mentioned that the most important thing is to have an extra free guide.

During the May Day holiday, bloggers who wanted to explore restaurants basically went to Linzi Courtyard Food City. They had to queue up so long that they couldn’t get food. So he found a barbecue restaurant near the exchange house. The food was just as delicious and it saved time and avoided the crowds.

The huge popularity of the topic also catalyzed the enthusiasm of the special forces college students to try, and they followed the trend and started a one-week branch exchange mission with one click. Zhang, who was studying in Chengdu, randomly found a college student studying in Guang'an (Sichuan) on the school confession wall to exchange schools and dormitories. Not only did he travel to Guang'an for a weekend, but he also took a mechanics class for him.

Of course, while exchanging travel saves accommodation costs, there are more uncertainties. Douyin blogger "Xiao Xinjiang" exchanged cities with an online friend in Changsha, but was afraid of affecting the other's roommates, and also needed to consider safety and privacy, so they chose to stay in a hotel and only exchanged travel guides.

In Xiao Xinjiang's view, her main purpose is to experience the fun of the exchange city and try the delicious food and fun things recommended by the locals, rather than just to exchange schools.

There are more than 6,000 comments under her video, which gather the wishes of college students from major cities who want to exchange cities. "Who comes to Xi'an? It's a three-person room. Usually there are only two people living there. You can use any makeup and skincare products you want." "Who comes to Harbin? There's no one in the dormitory and you can live alone. It's a lake view room with a bed and a desk under it." This has started a new round of carnival.

03 Food: Zibo launches barbecue carnival, and various places copy "Little Zibo"

From the director of the Zibo Culture and Tourism Bureau to the old man running the barbecue stall, it can be said that everyone in Zibo has tried their best for the May Day holiday.

In order to create a barbecue atmosphere, Zibo first lit the first fire for the May Day holiday with a grand barbecue festival.

Continuing the miracle of Chinese speed, Zibo built a barbecue city for tens of thousands of people in just 20 days.

At the same time, the barbecue festival and music that dance on people's taste buds are a perfect match. Therefore, Zibo also invited bands and singers such as Wing Band and Cheng Xiang to perform on stage, igniting the enthusiasm of tourists on the scene.

"There is a kind of hearty happiness," Xiao Tian, ​​who experienced the atmosphere of Zibo Barbecue Festival on site, described it this way to the host, "Everyone can sing and chat freely. One person starts the chorus, and everyone can't help but join in. The atmosphere is really good!"

In Xiaotian's opinion, going to Zibo to eat barbecue is a trip where "you can buy happiness with little money." "It's both affordable and delicious. There are 24 of us, and we spent less than 760 yuan, which is about 30 yuan per person. This should be my cheapest trip."

The atmosphere of free singing and the low-priced and delicious food are the important reasons why Zibo BBQ has been gaining popularity.

The combination of private tap water and social platforms has become an amplifier, making Zibo barbecue a trendy topic and a social currency in the circle of friends.

Therefore, tourists in Zibo explored every corner of this third-tier city like solving a puzzle, opened up hidden copies of Zibo tourism, and began to create intensive memes in addition to barbecue.

The "green bean cake uncle" selling on the street was watched by netizens from all over the country in turn. The barbecue chef who changed three places in 30 years was finally found by netizens with a microscope. Even the guy in Zibo duck head shop received a lot of attention because of his muscles. Under the superposition of multiple narratives, Zibo's unique urban human feelings have become a new check-in place for netizens, and have also opened up new ideas for travel.

Seeing the lively scene in Zibo, other places quickly followed suit and created "small Zibo" one after another. Although they could not replicate the overwhelming traffic of Zibo, they could use food as a small opening to "copy" a high-scoring answer sheet.

Cities already famous for their barbecue, such as Xichang, Jinzhou, Guiyang, and Xuzhou, took the lead. Mafengwo data showed that during the May Day holiday, the popularity of barbecue in Xichang increased by 250%, and the popularity of barbecue in Guiyang increased by 185%.

Taking Xichang as an example, the promotion model of Xichang barbecue is similar to that of Zibo. It also uses the form of barbecue music festival to drive the barbecue atmosphere throughout the city and release enthusiasm with the dual stimulation of taste buds and eardrums.

Barbecue is also becoming popular in small towns. When I went home for May Day, I found that a barbecue street had been built in my hometown within a month. "The banners read 'Why go to Zibo for barbecue?'"

For people living in county towns, the "cheap" barbecue stalls at their doorsteps can indeed be a good "meal replacement" option.

The newly emerged "barbecue street" is very lively. "There were no vacancies for three consecutive nights. I finally waited in line for an hour to get a seat." Xiao Zhai introduced that most of his friends went there for the popularity of Zibo barbecue. "Everyone wants to catch the wave of popularity."

From the process of Zibo barbecue breaking the circle, we can actually get a glimpse of the complete process of Internet hot spots from breaking the circle to continuous fermentation, and then creating positive word of mouth, and finally forming a heat cycle.

In this process, Zibo has undoubtedly created an excellent model.

The owner of Duzhu found that whether it is the major 18th-tier cities starting to copy the Zibo model, or travel blind boxes, short-term self-driving rentals, and exchange tours becoming popular on social platforms, most of the people on May 1st this year still focus on relatively low-end "budget travel" consumption, with the average customer spending basically around several thousand yuan.

Against the background of relatively low overall price investment, first of all, the public mentality is changing, especially before the holidays, when news about tourist destinations being overcrowded, traffic jams, and inability to book hotels is flying all over the place. For tourists who are determined to travel, in the process of choosing destinations and making travel plans, they have already been educated more than once by the saying "there are people everywhere". A firm choice to travel is a decision made after lowering expectations. Especially for tourists traveling to popular destinations, they have done a good job of managing expectations, and their self-satisfaction is naturally likely to increase.

At the same time, checking in on popular items has become a travel method and consumption habit pursued by more and more people.

Different from the past when hot products had to be "delicious, fun and exciting", the current check-in is more about pursuing "I am happy when I arrive". Just like the Internet memes such as "Come to Zibo to catch the barbecue" and the mainstream hot topics such as "Exchanging travel can help you save 500 million", they are all triggering the public's mentality of joining in the fun. Even if Zibo calls on tourists to limit travel, it still can't resist the enthusiasm of the public. As long as they have been to Zibo and posted it on social platforms, they have been satisfied.

Most importantly, the travel preferences of the new generation of young people are also changing. Their definition of travel has become more subjective, and their pursuit of travel has become more personalized and diversified. Similar scenic spots, similar Internet celebrity pedestrian streets, and similar commercial ancient towns can no longer arouse their interest. They often like to go to some niche and unpopular tourist cities first. "Flight + hotel" is no longer a standard travel package. Flexible and free self-driving, cycling, and blind box flights are also cool enough. Socialization, personality, and experience will become important criteria for their accommodation choices.

It is hard to say whether this is a "downgrade" or a recovery in consumption. But at least compared to the complaints of the "May 1st Travel Victims Alliance", this kind of carnival mentality, positive energy, and no internal consumption, people who travel join in the fun, and people at home watch the fun, isn't it a kind of peaceful time.

Author: 24 Bukong

Source: WeChat public account "Doujiao TMT (ID: ylwanjia)"