Dai Bin | Cultural Creation, New Space and Time, New Tourism Consumption Scenarios

At the invitation of relevant parties, Dai Bin, President of the China Tourism Research Institute, recently delivered a keynote speech at the Tianjin Tourism Industry Expo and the Beijing Cultural Forum, introducing the latest research results on the deep integration of culture and tourism. The full text is shared as follows:

The changes in consumer demand, technological progress, and business innovation have always been the logical basis for the integrated development of cultural industries, cultural industries, and tourism. The growing cultural leisure and tourism consumption has become a prosperous market and a driving force for promoting high-quality development.

The "block commercial district satellite city" of cultural supply space has constructed a new scene of tourism consumption

A well-developed infrastructure, public services, commercial environment, and cultural space have always been the fundamental resources of tourist cities and a powerful attraction for urban tourism. To promote the integrated development of culture and tourism, expand cultural and tourism consumption, we need to make good use of the advantages of cultural resource aggregation and dense tourist sources in the central urban area, activate the stock of public cultural resources through tourism consumption, and inject new high-quality development momentum into the tourism industry through cultural creation, technological innovation, and industrial investment. The classic forms of public culture are libraries, museums, art galleries, cultural centers, and theaters, which consciously construct cultural landmarks and carry corresponding ideologies and values through top-down spatial planning. Under the multiple effects of economies of scale, scope, and density, public cultural and leisure projects, including news publishing, broadcasting and television, education, technology, and other broad cultural institutions, will gather in the main urban area in space, providing high-quality content, products, services, and immersive scenes for cultural participation and tourism consumption.

With the development of the economy and society and the growth of tourism and leisure consumption, blocks, commercial districts, and satellite cities have begun to become new spaces for cultural supply and new scenes for tourism and leisure in an independent, open, and shared manner. As a space for the integration of culture and tourism, the blocks include commercial districts such as Wangfujing in Beijing, Huaihai Road in Shanghai, and Chunxi Road in Chengdu, as well as historical and cultural districts such as Nanluoguxiang, Houhai, and Dashilan. They are either inherited by the times with a strong traditional atmosphere and human fireworks, or by commercial and cultural landmarks. The spatial scope of commercial districts is larger and the geographical indications are more obvious, such as Guomao, Yansha, Huamao in Beijing, Huanshi East Road, Beijing Road and other commercial districts in Guangzhou, which gather cultural and leisure formats including cinemas, small theaters, script shows, e-sports halls, fitness centers, and fashion stores, attracting more and more local residents and foreign tourists, especially young customers. It is worth noting that in recent years, a number of commercial districts named after "li" have emerged in urban renewal, such as Huaxi Li and Dayue Chunfeng Li in Beijing, Xinan Li in Nanjing, Tianmu Li and Quanye Li in Hangzhou, Taikoo Li in Chengdu, and Lianxin Li in Zhengzhou. These "neighborhoods" that integrate tradition and modernity, leisure and tourism, commerce and culture, carry the imagination of urban and rural residents towards prosperity, and embody the development and market innovation of urban tourism that is enjoyable from afar and shared by hosts and guests. Those new tourism and leisure projects that are located in the suburbs and have high requirements for land resources, such as Universal Studios Beijing, Shanghai Disney, Guangzhou Chimelong, and Zhengzhou Yinji, have become new landmarks of urban culture with their large investment, wide space, and multiple formats, and have changed the temperament of the city to a certain extent.

Influenced by urban leisure spaces and consumption concepts, more and more urban tourists are not only visiting well-known attractions and popular businesses, but also deeply experiencing local cultural leisure and daily life scenes. From theaters to markets, people are rediscovering the beauty of travel. The central government documents and the "14th Five Year Plan" for tourism development have also put forward clear requirements for "building a number of world-class tourist attractions and resorts with rich cultural heritage, and creating a number of national level tourist and leisure cities and blocks with distinctive cultural characteristics". Governments at all levels, destination marketing agencies, and travel service providers are paying attention to, researching, and drawing on the cultural landmarks and artistic spaces of international metropolises such as London, Paris, New York, Tokyo, and Singapore, and have reached a consensus on the following concept: whether it is building world-class tourist destinations or developing contemporary urban tourism, tourists should be able to see the evolution of history and cultural heritage, and better see the future of economic and social development. The development strategy of urban tourism in contemporary China should not only creatively inherit and innovate the excellent traditional culture, but also promote the advanced socialist culture, making the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation and people's happiness a new experience of tourism and leisure.

The "day and night four seasons full life cycle" of cultural leisure time has created and met new demands for tourism consumption

Compared to the traditional model of "working during the day and sleeping at night; working for five days and resting on weekends; working hard and living in retirement", contemporary people are more willing to "work hard and live a good life", and the time, space, and content of leisure have also undergone significant changes. A special survey conducted by the China Tourism Research Institute shows that over 60% of local leisure workers choose to engage in consumer shopping and leisure activities such as on-site shopping, dining out, beauty and hairdressing, and amusement rides. About 20% of them engage in cultural and leisure activities such as watching movies, visiting museums, exhibition halls, science museums, art galleries, celebrity residences, and going to bookstores and libraries. In 2022, over 70% of tourists participated in two or more cultural activities during holidays, and more middle-aged, elderly, and children participated in cultural leisure, indoor ice and snow sports, and study tours, forming a colorful cultural landscape along with reading, exhibitions, theater performances, square dancing, and street dance. One old and one young, all year round, 24 hours a day, there is no place in China without scenery, and when is life not leisurely. The strong cultural atmosphere not only improves people's living standards and overall quality, but also provides richer experience scenarios and consumption projects for the deep integration of culture and tourism.

More and more cultural leisure and tourism consumption occurs between 18:00 and 20:00, with the most active activity occurring within a 6-kilometer radius of habitual living environments and residential hotels, as well as among young people. Affected by the increasingly active nighttime economy, traditional nighttime consumption spaces such as theaters and cinemas are striving to create a more pleasant comprehensive consumption environment. The younger generation of art masters have created and researched a number of fashionable cultural consumption scenes based on available heritage spaces, such as the Zhengyi Temple Ancient Theater in Beijing and the Anligan Indoor Music Hall in Tianjin, gradually gaining market recognition. Museums, memorial halls, libraries, science and technology museums, and other daytime cultural venues have extended their opening hours in response to policies, providing visitors with more study courses and cultural experience projects, such as Hangzhou's Museum Wonderful Night and Henan Museum's "Lost Treasures". More young people unconsciously create their own culture such as bars, coffee shops, rock music, talk shows, and experimental dramas in the process of commercial consumption at night, and use the power of the market to make these innovative cultures go further. Some have survived the test of time and become new cultural genes. From international experience, these original and regional cultures are often infused with vitality and fashion, becoming indispensable elements of urban tourism.

In recent years, the deep integration of art, technology, and tourism has effectively improved the leisure quality of citizens, while also creating more tourism consumption promotion cases with reference value and promotional value. The 10 classic cases of the integration of art and tourism, such as "Hangzhou City Study", "Memories of Yangzhou under the Half Moon", and "Nanjing 24-hour Art Museum" released by the China Tourism Research Institute, have attracted widespread attention from the industry, media, and society because artists have "shown the world they see", and also because city managers have created an equal and free cultural space for foreign tourists and local citizens to communicate.

The consumption demand for "sightseeing leisure vacation coexistence" in mass tourism has promoted innovation in the cultural industry

In the new stage of comprehensive development of mass tourism, sightseeing will coexist with leisure and vacation demand for a long time, and this law will not change due to the consumption space in cities or rural areas. We cannot simply think of urban architecture as steel and concrete, but rather as urban scenery and consumption scenes. Daxing Airport, National Centre for the Performing Arts, Guangzhou Tower, Pudong New Look, including the well connected subway network, are also urban tourism resources in the new era? Over time, wouldn't it also become a cultural heritage of the future? In this sense, cultural construction cannot only excavate historical and cultural resources, but also create through market cultivation, technological research and development, and commercial investment. The latter should attract the attention of urban innovation decision-makers and tourism development promoters, and make it a reality through government actions such as industrial planning, investment promotion, and investment attraction. More and more cities are realizing that the development of cultural industries cannot be separated from the introduction of large-scale projects and the investment of heavy assets. The early Shijingshan Amusement Park, today's Shougang Cultural Park, Universal Studios Resort, and World Expo Park are all cultural and leisure projects with heavy assets, as well as important tourist attractions and consumption scenes.

The integration and innovation of classic culture, popular art, pop music, and urban tourism is an increasingly evident trend in contemporary urban tourism. Moscow's ballet, Rome's opera, Vienna's Golden Hall symphony, as well as China's urban poetry recitation tours and modern art exhibitions in the 1980s, all attract specific groups of people to visit a city. The determining factor that attracts young tourists to visit a city today is not solely traditional natural and historical cultural resources, nor just landmark buildings, but these cultural and leisure resources that highlight individuality and diversity. In the first half of this year and during the summer, concerts, music festivals, village supermarkets, and village evenings in Beijing, Tianjin, Xi'an, Hainan, Guizhou, and other places not only generated considerable performance revenue, but also drove tourism consumption several times higher than this. The Strawberry Music Festival in Beijing and other places has brought a fashionable combination of traditional folk customs and trendy art to holiday cities. Music, opera, dance, and the fragrance of books, as well as cultural and leisure projects such as Rainbow Choir, Lego Park, Starlight Theater, and Chang'an Twelve Hours, are all attracting visitors from the new era. After the "small town traveler", the "future traveler" led by the post-2000s has also begun to enter our field of vision, reshaping the new pattern of urban tourism together with "reverse tourism", "healing tourism", and "micro tourism, micro vacation".

Compared with world-class tourist attractions and resorts driven by incremental investment, the innovative models of leisure scenes rooted in daily life and optimization of existing resources are equally noteworthy. Compared to traditional theatrical stage art, mass arts such as xiangsheng, skits, and quyi that are integrated into daily scenes, intangible cultural heritage that inherits lifestyles, and future urban exhibition halls, science and technology museums, and modern art museums should become the priority interface for cultural and tourism integration, and are more suitable for cultivating new driving forces for urban tourism. How to make the warm human fireworks heal the tourists who come from afar, we should pay attention to leveraging the innovative power of small and micro enterprises. I hope that urban development leaders and tourism and leisure builders will pay more attention to small and micro enterprises, entrepreneurial and innovative teams, freelancers, and flexible workers. They are young and professional, passionate about the future, highly sensitive to new demands, and have a large number of people. As long as they have enough patience and tolerance, over time, a group of leaders in niche tracks and segmented fields will surely emerge.

Author | Dai Bin

Editor | Xue Shiyi

Manuscript Review | Yang Liqiong

Source | China Tourism Research Institute (Data Center of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism)

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