Yunnan to boost new consumption in cultural tourism

The General Office of Yunnan Provincial People's Government has issued a three-year scheme (2021-2023) for boosting new types of consumption and tapping consumptive potentials in the province.

The scheme stipulated that cultivation of new consumption in cultural tourism calls for enriching new business patterns and products of cultural tourism, fostering consumption clusters in cultural experiences, and improving the smart tourist services.

The Tongde night market in Kunming (Photo courtesy: Kunming Daily) 

The scheme said Yunnan will speed up the cultivation of new business patterns that feature cultural experiences, recreational activities, farming experiences, industrial-heritage tours, popular science researches, cross-border tours and fitness programs.

While developing a number of bases for outdoor sports and leisure, the scheme offers guidance for travel agencies to develop new tourist products under various themes.

The scenic areas across Yunnan are encouraged to make preferential policies in ticketing, tourism management and drive tours. 

A smart canteen at the Kunming-based Shuncheng shopping mall (Photo courtesy: Kunming Daily) 

Yunnan will build up national pilot cities for cultural-tourism consumption, while constructing demonstration zones for culture-tourism integration, night markets for cultural tourism consumption, and cultural industrial parks at the national and provincial levels, said the scheme.

The province will also promote the connection, alignment and expansion of scenic spots, and develop a number of distinct areas for cultural-tourism consumption: destinations for online celebrities, displaying places of tourist products, artistic blocks and cultural facilities for entertainment.

10 new tourist business areas have been named in 2021, and 30 demonstration bases will have been built up for new business patterns in the province by 2023, according to the scheme.

  

The touristy Jiaochang boulevard bulavar in Kunming (Photo courtesy: Kunming Daily)

In addition, Yunnan will push forward smart traffic and construct smart hotels and scenic areas, piloting in the tourist sector the use of new technologies such as 5G, big data, cloud computing and AI.

Standards of building smart scenic areas were issued this year, and the smart construction of Grade 4A scenic spots and above has been fully completed.

Information hotels, inns and smart service areas near expressways were built up, and facial-recognition technologies have been used in check-in services, data analysis, tourist portraits and others.

The tourist village of Maidichong in central Yunnnan's Yiliang county (Photo courtesy: Kunming Daily)

Source: Yunnan Tourism and Culture Times; Trans-editing by Wang Shixue