Emerging trends in summer cultural tourism

Compared with tightly-scheduled travel plans and picture-taking tours, city-walking focuses on the free, casual and spontaneous experience.[Xinhua/Photo]

Summer is the yearly peak season for cultural and tourist consumption. Some new traveling trends emerged this summer vacation, with family-oriented educational travel, music concerts, and city walks going viral on social media.

Educational travel: Deeper integration of culture and tourism

Heading north along Zhongguancun Avenue, groups of children gathered to visit renowned universities in Beijing's Haidian district.

Educational travel, during which tourists visit academic institutions and historical museums or learn survival skills in rural regions, has changed travel into an educational method, placing culture in the spotlight.

According to data from Qichacha (a Chinese online database of companies organizations), 322 companies for educational travel were established in the first five months of 2023, representing a year-on-year increase of 79.89%.

During the screening of the movie Chang'an, the Qujiang new area in northwest China's Xi'an city collaborated with Fliggy Travel and the film's production team to launch six travel routes for summer education.

Leveraging its rich revolutionary resources, Guizhou introduced ten summer travel routes for history-themed education.

The Guangzhou Museum, the Chinese Garden Museum, and the Suzhou Wu Culture Museum have integrated their unique characteristics into educational travel projects.

Many sectors are taking actions, indicating that educational travel born from the fusion of culture and tourism is destined for continuous upgrading and innovation.

Music Concerts: Linking up industries through tourism

From June 29 to July 2, a popular singer held four consecutive concerts in Hainan. Statistics suggest that these four concerts attracted 154,600 attendees, with 61.5% coming from outside the province. Over the four days, Haikou produced 976 million yuan in tourism revenue, three times greater than during the Dragon Boat Festival holiday.

Traveling to different cities to attend concerts is not a new trend. According to the 2023 semi-annual national performance market report released by the China Association of Performing Arts, cross-city concert attendance has become a significant consumer trend in terms of large-scale concerts and music festivals.

Cross-city concert attendance is a type of tourism in which the destination switches from tourist sites to the music stage. Notably, concerts foster the growth of a complete industrial chain, including transportation, food, lodging, and retail, enhancing tourism's "multiplier effect."

Many cities have taken advantage of this chance. The Bubbling Boiling Music & Arts Festival was hosted in the Tianjin Dongjiangwan Beach Area in late July, creating cross-city transit routes between Beijing, Tianjin, and the festival site. Over three days, over 60,000 people attended the event, roughly half coming from Beijing and Hebei.

Cities like Hohhot, Nanning, Nanchang, Baotou, and Quanzhou are also trying to hold high-quality concerts and music festivals.

City walk: Travel as a lifestyle

City walk is perhaps the hottest phrase this summer. Shanghai, Chengdu, Changsha, Xi’an… People now like exploring cities step by step.

City walk refers to planned walks along unique urban routes, often led by professionals, to explore city corners from a tourist perspective. On social media, city walk also refers to casual neighborhood walks.

According to data from Ctrip, in June this year, city-walk bookings increased more than fivefold year-on-year, with cities like Shanghai, Beijing, Xi'an, Changsha, Hangzhou, and Chengdu seeing a rising demand for related products.

In response to the needs of modern individuals, city walk is evolving into more of a lifestyle. It eliminates the meticulous planning and the burden of carrying luggage, allowing participants to seamlessly integrate with the city during their travels and quickly return to their daily routines.

From the already established large-scale nocturnal cultural tourism consumption market to the rising phenomenon of city walk, a clear trend is emerging: Travel is becoming increasingly intertwined with people's lives, and travel consumption is shifting from being "intentional purchases" to "casual purchases." In the future, travel may integrate into our daily life as a well-accepted habit.

Source: CCTV; trans-editing by Guo Yao