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the hottest business in the past two years is cultural tourism.

with wave after wave of internet celebrity city crazes, the cultural tourism sector has seen several surges, and cultural tourism industries in various regions have been racking their brains to make themselves the next internet celebrity city.

half a year has passed since march this year when tianshui, gansu province, became popular due to the popularity of spicy hot pot, and shanxi's cultural tourism industry became popular due to the popularity of "black myth: wukong". however, more than half of 2024 has passed, and real hits like zibo and harbin have not yet appeared, while a number of cultural tourism companies are already struggling to make ends meet.

after a long winter, the spring of culture and tourism seems to be fleeting.

01

recently, qujiang culture and tourism released its 2024 semi-annual report. the financial report showed that in the first half of 2024, qujiang culture and tourism's operating income was 770 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11.9%; the net profit attributable to the parent was a loss of 187 million yuan, a year-on-year change from profit to loss, a decrease of 5091.16%.

the most exaggerated thing is that among the 20 participating and holding companies under qujiang culture and tourism, only 8 achieved profitability, and the remaining 12 companies were in a loss-making state.

the tang dynasty city that never sleeps, one of xi'an's most famous attractions, only achieved operating income of 39.383 million yuan and a net profit of only 235,300 yuan in the first half of the year.

but this is already a scenic spot company with relatively good performance under qujiang culture and tourism.

the daming palace ruins park, which performed even worse, achieved revenue of 67.985 million yuan in the first half of this year, but its net loss reached 59.417 million yuan.

since april this year, qujiang tourism has suffered equity freezes several times, with its asset-liability ratio as high as 78.17%. just in july, qujiang tourism also sold off assets such as daming palace national heritage park management co., ltd. to save itself, which caused a lot of public opinion.

in contrast to the dismal performance, xi'an's cultural tourism industry is booming.

"the off-season for tourism in xi'an is only from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m."

in 2023, xi'an attracted 278 million tourists and generated revenue of 335 billion yuan, ranking fifth among all cities, after beijing, shanghai, nanjing and chengdu.

the reason why xi'an can attract so many tourists is that it has a large number of historical and cultural attractions.

among them, the "big wild goose pagoda and tang paradise in qujiang, xi'an", the xi'an city wall scenic area, the daming palace national heritage park, and the national-level tourist and leisure district tang dynasty city pedestrian street, these popular online attractions, all belong to the qujiang cultural tourism operation.

source: tuchong

but these popular tourist attractions basically do not make money.

taking the popular online attraction datang city that never sleeps as an example, datang city that never sleeps had an operating income of 65.86 million yuan in the first half of 2023. according to media reports, datang city that never sleeps received 42.44 million tourists in the first half of 2023.

if other factors are not considered, the average income brought by the tang dynasty city that never sleeps to qujiang cultural tourism is only 1.5 yuan per person.

when searching for guides to popular scenic spots such as the tang dynasty city that never sleeps, big wild goose pagoda, and daming palace, you can also find that if you just want to visit the tang dynasty city that never sleeps, you don't need to spend any money. you can take photos outside the big wild goose pagoda without climbing the tower, and the outer park of the daming palace is free, so you don't have to pay if you are not interested in the ruins area inside.

to sum up, if you just visit these three attractions without making any secondary purchases, you can spend almost no money except for the necessary transportation, food and accommodation.

so even if the tourist attraction doesn’t make money, the surrounding hotels and restaurants must be making a lot of money, right?

but the fact is that not only qujiang culture and tourism, but also the three major cultural and tourism listed companies in xi'an:xi'an tourism, qujiang culture tourism and xi'an catering are now in deep loss crisis, with the three companies suffering a combined loss of 310 million yuan in the first half of the year.

in xi'an, xi'an tourism, qujiang cultural tourism and xi'an cuisine have basically covered xi'an's most core tourism resources.

xi'an tourism company owns a total of 57 hotels and homestays, as well as hotel resources with a long history such as victory hotel and jiefang hotel. xi'an china travel service and xi'an overseas travel, both subsidiaries of xi'an tourism, are respectively among the top 100 and top 10 agencies in the country and in shaanxi province.

however, in the first half of 2024, only 7 of xi'an tourism's 17 subsidiaries and 2 joint-stock companies achieved profits. among them, xi'an china travel and xi'an overseas lost 5.2 million yuan and 960,000 yuan respectively in the first half of the year.

xi'an catering owns many well-known time-honored brands such as xi'an restaurant, lao sun's restaurant, and defachang hotel. however, in the first half of 2024, xi'an catering's operating income was 349 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 7.93%, and a net loss of 59.6463 million yuan.

since 2013, xi'an catering has been in the red after deducting non-recurring gains and losses, and this has been going on for 11 consecutive years.

among tourism listed companies, except for the three giants in xi'an, the performance of cultural tourism groups such as zhangjiajie and guilin tourism was not optimistic in the first half of this year. some turned from profit to loss, and some expanded their losses.

the tourism industry is booming, but it still seems difficult to translate into real profits.

what exactly is wrong with the current tourism industry?

02

last year, zibo and harbin emerged out of nowhere, and their cities were packed with tourists from afar. since then, cultural and tourism departments in various places have shown their talents and joined the publicity war. many cultural and tourism directors even personally took part in the dance, rap, and cosplay.

last year was undoubtedly the best year for the tourism industry in recent years.

the "china domestic tourism development report (2023-2024)" released by the china tourism academy shows that the number of tourists during major domestic holidays in 2023 will not only return to the level before the epidemic, but will even increase. the number of tourists and revenue during the national day holiday in 2023 will even surpass 2019.

so what about this year?

august is coming to an end. data from the china railway corporation shows that the railway carried an average of 13.87 million passengers per day during the summer vacation. according to statistics from the ministry of culture and tourism, more than 4,000 cultural and tourism consumption activities and about 37,000 events were carried out in various places during the summer vacation, which can be said to be quite lively.

but from a physical perspective, this year's tourism popularity is obviously not as high as last year.

not only did no real internet celebrity city emerge this year, people's willingness to travel also decreased.

as a result, many scenic spots have launched ticket discount promotions, but some scenic spots are still facing the double blow of reduced revenue and decreased number of tourists.

for this reason, the tourism industry has become more and more popular this year. whether it is hotels, ota platforms, or even airlines, they have begun to offer more and more fierce discounts and promotions.

the phenomenon of increasing volume and falling prices has become particularly obvious this year.

this has also led to serious losses for local cultural and tourism enterprises this year, and even frequent defaults.

in february this year, mengjin state-owned cultural tourism group in luoyang city, henan province was even overwhelmed by a debt of 100 million yuan. the court believed that there was no possibility of reorganization or reconciliation and it was declared bankrupt.

everything is cultural tourism, but it has become the main factor for losses in cultural tourism companies.

along with the booming cultural and tourism craze, low-quality artificial attractions are being launched rapidly, copy-and-pasted ancient cities are flooding everywhere, and the ridicule of "i miss you so much in xx" is the best annotation of this scene.

the "fake ancient cities" built all over the country are all the same and cost a huge amount of money. not only are they easily left unfinished, but they also have poor profitability. according to media statistics, more than 80% of the country's man-made ancient cities are unprofitable.

zhangjiajie, which suffered a loss of 60 million yuan in the first half of this year, also cooperated with wanda to develop dayong ancient city, planning to create "eight ones", including an ancient city, a business, a program, a group of hotels, a lishui river, a batch of events, a platform, and an ip to revitalize dayong ancient city.

however, in the first half of this year, the number of people who bought tickets to dayong ancient town was only about 2,300, and zhangjiajie has been losing money for four consecutive years.

however, not all cultural and tourism enterprises are like this.

in sharp contrast to these loss-making companies, the number of tourists to changbai mountain in the first half of 2024 increased by 64.3% year-on-year, and revenue and profits increased simultaneously. revenue was 254 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 51.73%; net profit attributable to shareholders was 21.0329 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 71.70%.

source: tuchong

wuzhen, owned by china youth travel service, received 7.72 million tourists in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 568%, with an average price per customer of 223 yuan, and achieved revenue of 1.784 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 183.65%, and a net profit of 284 million yuan.

these cultural and tourism enterprises are able to stand out among many loss-making enterprises by relying on their innovation in cultural and tourism models.

for example, wuzhen operates completely independently, but relying on its unique business model, it has transformed wuzhen from a run-down town into its own cultural ip, and has derived diversified functions such as exhibitions and culture. these cannot be achieved by publicity and traffic alone.

focusing only on publicity while ignoring the construction of the cultural and tourism industry itself is tantamount to missing the forest for the trees.not to mention, many local cultural and tourism centers invited internet celebrities but excluded tourists, which brought about the opposite effect.

cultural tourism has not only become popular in the past two years. from the earliest yunnan, sanya, and guilin to the current zibo and erbin, they have all become internet celebrities.

however, during the previous craze for internet celebrities, yunnan, sanya and guilin were plagued by endless rumors of overcharging tourists, causing their reputations to plummet again and again.

it is enough to show that when "huge wealth" comes, a city is truly tested.

03

end

looking back at last year's popular cities, zibo's gdp ranked seventh in shandong province in 2023, with an actual growth rate of 5.5%, almost at the bottom of the province. harbin, which was hot at the beginning of the year, still ranked last in the gdp of the "northeast f4" in the first quarter of 2024.

this is because, although the tourism industry has boosted consumption, its proportion in the economy is not high.

before the pandemic, the added value of tourism-related industries, including travel, catering, accommodation, shopping and entertainment, accounted for less than 5% of the national gdp. even in some major tourist cities, the proportion of cultural and tourism-related industries in the overall economy is less than 10%.

in the past two years, cultural and tourism consumption has recovered rapidly and the online voice has been quite large, but it is obvious that online popularity is not equal to actual passenger flow, and actual passenger flow is not equal to corresponding economic benefits.

local cultural tourism can be said to be sitting on a gold mine, but at the same time it also carries more responsibilities.

how to better build scenic spots, how to improve service quality, how to innovate tourism projects, and how to protect the rights and interests of tourists are the issues that should be considered before cultural and tourism promotion.

furthermore, how to convert traffic into revenue, how to optimize the profit model, and how to benefit local industrial development are also worth thinking about and improving.

faced with the current environment, local culture and tourism may require more patience. only by taking the first step can there be more steps to come, and local culture and tourism can develop, thereby driving the advancement and development of more industries.