Dai Bin | Studying cannot be simply treated as a business, universities should be more open and inclusive to the public

The 2023 China Economic Half Year Report shows that the contribution of domestic demand to economic growth is steadily increasing. The biggest highlight of the consumer sector in the first half of 2023 is the recovery growth of the tourism market, which plays an important role in expanding domestic demand, promoting consumption, and driving economic growth. Recently, the leadership of the State Council held its first symposium, with the theme of further unleashing the potential of tourism consumption and promoting high-quality development of the tourism industry.

Dai Bin, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, President of the China Tourism Research Institute, and Director of the Data Center of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, attended the symposium. In an interview with reporters from Nandu, he revealed that "a signal released by the central government at this symposium is to make cultural activities and tourism consumption new driving forces for economic growth. The country will further strengthen the construction of tourism public infrastructure such as airports, docks, stations, and scenic spots, providing a favorable foundation for public capital, industrial capital, and private capital to enter the tourism market. Traditional tourism enterprises should seize the time to restore supply, and projects that integrate vacation industry, culture, and tourism around cities will receive support from both the national and local governments

As long as consumers' expectations stabilize and entrepreneurs' confidence is boosted, the entire tourism economy will enter a healthy and sustainable track, "Dai Bin said frankly.

However, it should be noted that there are still issues in the current tourism market such as difficulty in obtaining tickets, overcrowding of scalpers, and chaos in study tours. How can we solve these problems? In this interview, Dai Bin also provided relevant suggestions on these issues.

Dai Bin, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, President of the China Tourism Research Institute, and Director of the Data Center of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

What's hotter than the weather is tourism, and "following concerts to travel" has become a new trend

Southern Metropolis: Has the popularity of summer vacations returned to pre pandemic levels? Is it still beyond the pre pandemic summer heat?

Dai Bin: During the summer months of June, July, and August, it is expected that the number of tourists will reach 1.854 billion, and the tourism consumption will reach 1.2 trillion yuan. This market should be the best summer tourism market in four years. We believe that we have achieved the expected goals, improved consumer confidence, stabilized consumer expectations, laid a good market foundation for the upcoming National Day holiday and the eight day Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, and also played a role in warming up the market.

However, compared to the strong flow of people, the overall tourism consumption has not fully recovered, and compared to the growth rate of the number of tourists, the revenue growth rate of tourism has not yet reached the expected level. There are several reasons for this. More first-time tourists are joining the industry's consumption competition, with central towns and rural residents becoming the main force of consumption. This year's Loong Boat Festival, 22% of tourists are rural residents. The consumption of first-time tourists is not very high.

In addition, during this holiday, everyone mainly chooses to travel in close proximity. The travel distance has not yet recovered to the level of 2019. The average distance traveled by people during holidays in 2019 was 270 kilometers. According to data from this year's Labor Day holiday, the average distance traveled by people is only 180 kilometers.

Nowadays, in order to develop tourism, many scenic spots and attractions offer free admission, and many tourists choose to travel by car. Self driving trips consume fuel and road transportation costs, but these costs have not been fully accounted for yet.

Overall, we feel that the recovery speed of per capita tourism expenditure is still weaker than the recovery speed of the entire travel market.

Nandu: Summer tourism has experienced explosive growth this year. From the perspective of the domestic tourism market, what are the new trends in summer tourism so far?

Dai Bin: So far this summer, we feel that tourism is hotter than the weather. The combination of four emerging formats of summer vacation, health care, study abroad, and vacation with self driving individual travel has led to good development in vacation areas around major cities such as Beidaihe and Zhangbei Grassland in Beijing, Zhoushan, Suzhou, and Hangzhou in Shanghai, and Conghua in Guangzhou. Summer can be said to be a period of strong supply and demand, with new demands, products, and projects constantly emerging.

It is worth noting that there have also been many new developments in night tourism and the integration of culture and tourism. Many young people travel with concerts, exhibitions, and concerts, which have become new forms of social interaction.

The TFBOYS "Ten Year Promise" concert was held in Xi'an, attracting many fans to travel there. Southern Metropolis: Central government departments are also paying close attention to the release of tourism consumption potential and promoting high-quality development of the tourism industry. What benefits will this bring to tourism enterprises and the market? How should tourism enterprises and markets seize this opportunity?

Dai Bin: From the meeting of the Central Political Bureau calling for boosting consumer confidence, including tourism, to the meeting of the State Council leaders, I learned that a signal released by the central government is that the country should attach importance to the role of consumption in the development of the entire national economy, and make cultural activities and tourism consumption new driving forces for economic growth. This will also help stabilize consumer expectations and boost consumer confidence. Everyone no longer needs to worry about not being able to come back from traveling like during the epidemic prevention and control period, as obstacles related to contact consumption have been completely eliminated.

Secondly, by releasing relevant signals, the country will further strengthen the construction of tourism public facilities, tourism infrastructure, and public services, such as airports, docks, stations, scenic spots, etc., thereby providing a favorable foundation for public capital, industrial capital, and private capital to enter the tourism market. So we also hope that traditional tourism enterprises, whether they are travel agencies or hotels, can quickly restore their supply. For some new financial and industrial capital preparing to enter the tourism industry, this is also good news. Projects that integrate vacation industry, culture, and tourism around cities will receive support from both the national and local governments.

So in this sense, it can also encourage our investment confidence and stabilize the confidence of entrepreneurs. As long as consumers' expectations stabilize and entrepreneurs' confidence is boosted, the entire tourism economy will enter a healthy and sustainable track of development.

Tourists take photos at the corner tower of the Forbidden City (taken on June 11th). Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Li Xin: The public should have the right to know, and the ticketing channels should be transparent

Southern Capital: During the peak summer season every year, the number of reserved tickets for scenic spots is limited, and some popular attractions are almost "hard to find tickets". Can the problem of difficulty in obtaining tickets for tourist attractions be solved? How to solve this difficult problem?

Dai Bin: In any country and at any time, popular scenic spots will have a temporary supply shortage problem. The Louvre in France is like this, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the United States is also like this. So we need to develop more high-quality tourist attractions and resorts. In the past, people went to Beijing to see the Forbidden City, the Great Wall and the National Expo, but now they can go to Universal Studios. Although it is also crowded, let's imagine that if there is no Universal Studios, Disney or Chimelong, these traditional scenic spots will be more crowded? So in this sense, we need to open the gates and release water to provide more high-quality tourist attractions and resorts.

At the same time, we need to increase market promotion and guide tourists to travel during off peak hours. For example, during the summer vacation, teenagers often gather for study tours. Therefore, for the vast number of retirees, their time constraints are not so strong, and they can choose to travel at other times without competing with teenagers for this time and space. Paid vacation is gradually being implemented now, and in the future we can make good use of the time spent on paid vacation.

It should also be noted that the total number of scenic spots such as the Forbidden City cannot be infinitely expanded, as it is located in the core area and has its own quiet requirements. If the admission scale is expanded without restrictions, the experience will also be greatly reduced. So we hope that top scenic spots like the Forbidden City can extend the booking time. For example, two or three months in advance, so that we can better predict which day to go and which day not to go. Another approach is to provide a certain number of tickets to organized tourists, such as travel agencies and distributors, rather than relying solely on retail. We are also exploring these methods.

Using technological means to communicate information between supply and demand sides, and utilizing artificial intelligence technology to predict and warn of future urban passenger flow is also a feasible method. Let everyone know which places are crowded and which places are not crowded before traveling. For example, if it is a museum or art gallery, I can visit both the Guangzhou Art Museum and the Guangzhou Library. Scenic spots also have a certain degree of substitution relationship, which is not absolutely irreplaceable.

Nandu: Regarding the difficulty of booking tourist attractions, some people believe that this kind of booking actually blocks some people from the attractions. How do you view this viewpoint?

Dai Bin: Reservation is an inevitable trend in the development of tourism, and it is also a necessary way to improve the tourism experience and enhance the efficiency of the tourism industry. But in this process, we also need to pay attention to how to give everyone a better experience and do good things well. For example, can offline ticket purchasing be enabled for people who do not have smartphone usage functions offline? All of these require our exploration.

Regarding the issue of difficulty in booking scenic spots and museums, it is necessary to focus on the management system. For example, if the scenic area needs to extend its opening hours, and there are fewer people during the day, but there is still a demand to visit on weekends and after 6 pm, can the opening hours be extended? All of them are currently in our exploration.

Nandu: Recently, the Beijing police have cracked down on the phenomenon of "scalpers" reselling free tickets at a markup around the National Museum. Six individuals were criminally detained and three were administratively punished in accordance with the law. Why do tourist attraction tickets that ordinary tourists cannot grab end up in the hands of scalpers?

Dai Bin: In situations where supply exceeds demand, scalping is a market phenomenon, but not all market phenomena can be tolerated. What are the reasons for scalpers' scalping? If it is linked with internal personnel, obtaining free tickets or visit tickets, and then dumping them out, this is not a general moral condemnation issue, it involves illegal issues, and then it can be punished through the law.

How to solve this problem? The first priority is to establish a sound legal mechanism that allows violators to bear the appropriate costs, thereby deterring potential violators. Secondly, make channels transparent and give the public the right to know: how many votes are there in a day? Who received these tickets? From which channels can these tickets be obtained? Taking Guobo as an example, there is a group of travel agencies that can carry out study tours at Guobo. How were the personnel involved in this group of study tours generated? This should also be open and transparent.

Fundamentally speaking, increasing high-quality tourism products and promoting the construction of high-quality facilities and services, including increasing the supply of cultural and museum venues, to meet the growing cultural and tourism needs of the public, high-quality cultural participation, and tourism consumption.

Nandu: Recently, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism issued a notice on further improving the management level of summer tourism scenic spots. What guidance does this notice have for strengthening the management level of tourism scenic spots?

Dai Bin: I think there are mainly two aspects of significance. One is to increase the total supply of tourist attractions in the market. After the epidemic and the rainstorm in the north during the summer, many scenic spots were closed or not opened according to the previous maximum and best carrying capacity. So the guidance requires providing as many scenic products as possible to the market and increasing the carrying capacity of scenic spots.

Secondly, we need to provide high-quality tourist attractions. For the vast number of tourist attractions, it is not advisable to constantly enclose beautiful scenery and charge admission fees. Instead, efforts should be made to provide low-priced or even free public goods to tourists and the tourism market as much as possible. Tourism is the right of the people. When ordinary people travel, we should try our best to satisfy the tourism rights of the general public.

For the vast number of tourism enterprises, scenic spots, and resorts, it is necessary to make good use of cultural, technological, and creative ideas to create more consumer friendly scenes for scenic spots. So it is required that scenic spots should enhance the creation of night time tourism culture and tourism integration secondary consumption scenes. Another aspect is to improve the level of public services, strengthen technology, and make good use of technological means and digital transformation to provide better tourism experiences for tourists. Only when tourists have a good experience will they be willing to consume, forming a virtuous cycle of mutual promotion between consumption and investment.

On July 26th, children of migrant workers visited the Forbidden City in Beijing. On the same day, the "Gratitude to the Motherland, Embracing the Future" 2023 Sunshine Youth Union Summer Camp, hosted by the All China Federation of Trade Unions and organized by the China International Travel Service, held its opening ceremony in Beijing. During the 12 day summer camp, more than 700 children of migrant workers from across the country will participate in a variety of experiential activities such as visiting the Forbidden City, climbing the Great Wall, and assembling new energy vehicle models. Shen Jizhong

Studying cannot be simply done as a business, universities should be more open and inclusive to society

Nandu: "The thousand yuan 'Qingbei Study Tour' didn't even enter the school gate," "Study tour instructors used to be tour guides for shopping groups," "Some study tours' travel without learning, '" and so on have become hot topics on the internet. Why is the current study tour market so chaotic?

Dai Bin: Studying abroad is currently in its early stages, and government regulatory agencies should also pay attention to it. For open and public universities like Tsinghua and Peking University, they hope to have more open spots and a more open attitude. Universities are national universities and public universities, and should be more open and inclusive to society.

Secondly, regarding the content of study tours and the qualifications of study tour guides, the education and cultural tourism departments should jointly conduct necessary reviews of these guides. After all, he is different from traditional tour guides. His educational target is many primary and secondary school students, and it cannot be simply treated as a business. Instead, it should promote the development of tourism from the perspective of cultivating national quality.

Southern Capital: How should study tours develop?

Dai Bin: We need to promote the development concept of "scholars' spirited study and travel to their home country and the world". We need to build a number of national camps for children and adolescents. National campsites are an essential component of the national education system, and are educational institutions aimed at cultivating cultural confidence in children, enhancing national scientific literacy, and social communication skills.

Cultivate a group of research and learning cities for the healthy growth and cultural exchange of young people. We must seize the inherent advantages of the travel needs of urban customer groups and the supply of study tours, rely on the economic and social development achievements of cities, and cultivate a group of study tour destination cities with profound cultural heritage and rich scientific and technological education resources.

Promote a group of national study tour routes targeting different age groups and integrating learning with tourism. The five national cultural parks along the Great Wall, Grand Canal, Long March, Yellow River, and Yangtze River, as well as the cities and villages along them, contain excellent traditional culture and red revolutionary culture. They are also tourist routes that practice the concept of national education and lifelong learning. Only by promoting the national route of border history and geography can the sense of community of the Chinese nation take root in everyone's heart. National parks, scientific expeditions, field investigations, and other routes have unique value and extremely important significance for building a lifelong learning system with Chinese characteristics.

Writing | Southern Metropolis Daily Reporter Wang Wei Intern Zhu Jiale Source | Please indicate the source when reprinting in Southern Metropolis Daily