10 Tendencies of the Cultural Tourism Industry under the New Era

        The development of the cultural industry shows new tendencies and features. Only understanding and grasping these features can seize the opportunity for development of China cultural industry under the new era, so as to achieve stable and rapid development.

        At present, Chine enters the new era. The cultural industry is also stepping into the new era. Under the great background of integrating new normal of economic development with new sci-tech revolution, there are new technologies and new models which continuously emerge, and innovation becomes the basic driving force for the development of the cultural industry. Compared with the past, the development of the cultural industry shows new tendencies and features. Only understanding and grasping these features can seize the opportunity for development of China cultural industry under the new era, so as to achieve stable and rapid development. As the vice president of the Cultural Industry Research Institute of Peking University, and professor of Peking University, Chen Shaofeng considers that, the cultural industry will show the following 10 features in the coming period:

I. Content upgrading

        With the change of a series of policy orientation related to the cultural industry, the current development of China cultural industry shall achieve platform upgrading, technology upgrading and content upgrading, and depend on content innovation to continuously promote the proportion of traditional culture, experience culture and positive energy culture. In the past, many people engaged in the cultural industry relied on some weird and vulgar content to catch the eyes; however, with the improvement of national cultural supervision strength, such action will face greater policy risk. In other words, in the past, if the works are requested to be removed from the shelf, there may be a possibility to reappear through rectification; however, at present, once the works are investigated, they may be banned forever. Therefore, with regard to the content upgrading of the cultural industry, adding more traditional cultural elements may avoid the emergence of over-superficial and vulgar content. In addition, from the perspective of the market, it is required to add experience culture and positive energy culture. What experience emphasizes is not just on-site “happy moment”. Memorable feeling is more important. It can arouse visitors’ desire to continue to accept experience. Thus, pure entertainment is not suitable. Only activities which are able to really inspire, impress and give people power can make participations remember them. Now, many theme parks of China lack cultural elements. Beside recreation facilities, they basically have no their own theme. Compared with Disneyland Theme Park, there is a big gap, so we shall learn from it, and add culture (rather than pure recreation content) to recreation activities.

II. Life aestheticization and creativity normalization

        With the improvement of aesthetic level of the public, aesthetics is more closely combined with daily life. From the perspective of future market space and consumption needs, life aestheticization is a great tendency for the development of the cultural industry, and it is able to provide new thinking for our creativity and marketing. Cultural products shall have high use value, with beautiful appearance, so as to achieve the unity of practicability and artistry. For example, with regard to traditional ceramic products, if the ceramic products are changed into daily necessities and some art design is added, the added value is increased; in addition, the internet platform is used to form the exclusive brand and design, with fast speed and strong marketing capacity, because, on the internet, imitation speed is very fast. It is required to maintain the leading position at any time, which is the typical expression which belongs to life aestheticization or blends aesthetics into the life of the masses. The industry trend of life aestheticization requires the cultural industry to develop towards creativity normalization, to make the creativity industry penetrate into the human life style. In fact, creativity is more widely applied in the marketing field, rather than product field. For ordinary products, the creative marketing method may make people shocked. For the same garment, the celebrity endorsement and ordinary people endorsement generate entirely different marketing effect. Therefore, the cultural industry shall integrate creativity with marketing, and focus on forging three aspects on this basis: firstly, the creativity of becoming the industrial chain or ecological industrial chain is not a dot, but a group and a series; secondly, creativity is reproduceable, replication is a requirement of value realization for creativity, and it is not just carrying out creativity for one place, also replicated to other places; thirdly, it is required to learn about trans-boundary, vision is not limited to one field, and creativity is implemented among different elements and fields, so as to strengthen diversity of creativity through trans-boundary.

III. IP sustainability

        IP is a kind of intellectual property rights, and it may reflect the object for buying and selling. Cultural enterprises’ IP is composed of Story IP, Image IP, Product IP and Enterprise IP. Before IP is created, there should be a story, because the story has the subject so as to generate the image. In other words, the story is a carrier of IP. In fact, after the image is incubated through the story, the image is a more important carrier of IP, as the image may be placed in any place, and turn a lot of things into carriers, but it no longer depends on the story. The image must have an opportunity to become a commodity. For example, the design of all images in Disney will be converted into commodities which may be toys or authorization. For Disney, the most remarkable thing is Product IP, and the product is changed into its passageway, marketing and public praise, as well as the most important method for its feedback, publicity and penetration. Finally, Story IP, Image IP and Product IP are combined with enterprise culture to form Enterprise IP which is the brand of the enterprise. However, due to displacement of mainstream consumers, IP may face the risk of failure, so it is required to continuously carry out the patrol incubation, including horizontal incubation for market segment and longitudinal incubation for time. For instance, in the past, a hot IP was called “Du Lala”. At that time, it was available for being enjoyed by people who were born in 1980s. But, for audiences who were born in 1990s, the scripts may be required to be modified into a story on how to deal with employees who were born in 1990s after Du Lala became a boss. Thus, the story may be told in such manner, and IP is continuously carried out the patrol incubation, so as to expand consumer groups and avoid failure of IP.

IV. Technology driving the emergence of trans-boundary

        At present, China has entered the internet era, and many enterprises have been developed into the internet enterprises from previous IT enterprises. The difference between internet enterprises and IT enterprises is that the IT enterprise’s income is from IT, and the internet enterprise’s income is from aspects except IT (in other words, it uses IT to earn money of other fields, which is similar to the meaning of the sentence that “to write poems well, you must be a know-all”. Now, the technology is not regarded as the main source of commercial income, but it creates many income sources except the technology, which is a great change today. In fact, at present, the companies owning pure IT technology are in decline, which is because such companies lack continuous income. Nowadays, in China, there are a great number of VR companies and AR companies, but they belong to one-off deal, and competition is more and more intense. In the internet era, all IT enterprises must earn money of aspects expect IT, and this is the rules of the era for internet companies. For example, Tencent uses IT to earn money of games; Alibaba uses IT to earn money of e-commerce; VR and AR companies cannot directly use VR and AR to make money, and they must use VR and AR to earn money of games, tourism, sport and theme parks. In conclusion, the technology is just a means, and the final purpose is to promote the development of the cultural industry. Only in this way can the stability and continuity of income be guaranteed.

V. Approaching of the new entertainment partner era for human beings

        With the gradually maturing of artificial intelligence technology, the era of entertainment robots and companion robots is coming. In the future, robots will have a very big market prospect. Every family may need a robot. Especially,with the acceleration of China’s aging of population, the elderly population continues to grow. It can be predicted that, entertainment robots and companion robots have a huge potential market. In addition, artificial intelligence technology becomes increasingly advanced and complicated. Nowadays, robots have owned the function of autonomous learning, so as to more easily blend into the human life, and achieve more complicated exchange and interaction with human beings. This changes our experience for many scenes, and even interpersonal relationship. However, while bringing convenience and joy to our life, artificial intelligence causes a lot of ethical issues. For example, in future, many people may marry the robot, which changes our traditional understanding for family ethics. In conclusion, robots are being developed in a more intelligent direction. We have reasonable reason to believe that, the new entertainment partner era for human beings has already arrived.

VI. Vertical and diversified business model of new media

        For media, there are three realization modes. The first one is advertisements; the second one is members, to depend on selling the content to achieve realization; the third one is to carry out vertical development. Now, new media has gradually replaced the traditional media to become the mainstream media form. However, the vertical and diversified operation of new media represents a direction for the future business model of the cultural industry. New media is a function of internet platform, with a function of traditional media communication. It is also a shopping place, and has the function of transactions. In short, new media will be a shopping place with communication capacity in the future. In addition, today, in China, there are basically three internet platforms: the first one is a big platform called BAT, and such big platform can make the industrial chain by itself; the second one is a middle professional platform (for example, JD.com is specially for shopping, and Jinri Toutiao is specially for information push), and the middle platform has the service with high professional level; the third one is a small platform, and such platform is a small shopping place for small spreading. For tens of thousands of small platforms, they focus on vertical and diversified business, content push, advertisements, e-commerce, and content marketing. For instance, Wechat Official Account “One Message” pushes a short video every day, and the current estimate reaches over RMB 2 billion Yuan. Small platforms may be joined up in the form of channel combination, so as to strengthen the competitiveness, and obtain the competitive advantages on big platforms and middle platforms. Channel combination has a big advantage which is to carry out fan transformation. There is no any competitive relationship among official accounts with different functions, to depend on mutual marketing to achieve the stream guidance of fans, and strengthen the fans for each other. In conclusion, verticalization and diversification are a very important growth concept of the future. Different small platforms rely on the vertical operation to form their own fan groups, and depend on channel combination to achieve mutual connection, so as to break through their own development bottleneck on the internet.

VII. Acceleration of the industrial culture

        Compared with ordinary products, cultural and creative products are characterized by high added-value. Therefore, we may depend on culture, design and brand to promote products and endow ordinary products with good creativity and connotation, so that they become cultural and creative products. At present, various artworks, cultural tourism souvenirs, office supplies, furniture and daily necessities may be tuned into cultural and creative products. The trend of the industrial culture is continuously strengthened, which is the main management concept of the cultural industry. Of course, only depending on cultural and creative products may have no good effect, so new media is regarded as a carrier to carry out vertical development, so as to continuously tell stories to products, and forge the cultural and creative e-commerce. This is a changeless mode. In other words, products must have their own spreading capacity, but the spreading capacity depends on cultural packaging. Emergency of cultural and creative e-commerce may gradually change the current situation that the traditional e-commerce has low added-value, considered as the effective method to solve the problem that merchants maliciously reduce the price to carry out competition and the platform is flooded with fake goods. Nowadays, in the aspect of cultural and creative e-commerce, Disney is a more successful company. As the derivative of cartoon films, its garment still has a good market. From Donald Duck and Winnie to Frozen, the garment production line is still operated today.

VIII. Indoor expansion of cultural tourism

        Due to the restriction of national conditions like weather and temperature, the development of cultural tourism is limited. Thus, the future cultural tourism is expanded into the indoor space from outdoor space, and the construction of experience halls or cultural complexes makes cultural tourism move into the indoor space, so as to avoid the effect of natural problems on cultural tourism, and ensure that tourists may obtain the best experience in the whole year. Cultural tourism is carried out indoor expansion. This is not to say that a large-scale amusement park is built in the indoor area, just like in the outdoor area. In the indoor area, a great number of projects with stronger experience are implemented, so as to form a unique theme park with the function of science popularization, safety education and national defense education, which is the main direction of future cultural tourism development. In addition, with the deep integration of tourism and science & technology, in the future, owning a relatively enclosed space is more beneficial for construction of sci-tech facilities, so as to give full play to the supporting role of sci-tech elements for cultural tourism. Specifically, we may attempt to build an indoor agricultural theme park, to achieve the combination of agricultural elements, theme park elements, high-tech elements and educational elements, and provide new-type experience. In the agricultural theme park, there may be Vegetable Garden, Fruit Garden, Flower Garden, healthy food, dietary therapy, educational base, and summer camp, so that middle and primary school students learn agricultural knowledge. In addition, many derivatives are formed through film experience, to make a complete industrial chain, which will be a promising model in the future.

IX. Cultural and sports integration

        Sport is a huge industry. In the future, the sports industry will be more integrated into our education, life, work and hobby. The sport industry is closely related to the cultural industry. In fact, from the perspective of the cultural industry, we may take sport as the entertainment industry, and regard sports competitions as the performance industry; the sports industry has a huge driving effect on the development of the cultural industry. Football is taken as an example. The most central income source of the Premier League is its broadcasting right, and the media income ranks the first in the list of all income, occupying over 50%. In addition, nowadays, football tourism is the most important sector to drive the economy. During the World Cup in Brazil, about 700,000 people went to Brazil to watch the World Cup, which was very huge revenue. Domestically, our sports industry has weak foundation, and the main problem is lack of high-level competitions so as to be unable to attract a large number of audiences, but we own enormous consumer groups, which is our advantage to develop the sports industry. Moreover, the sports industry, as well as the tourism industry shall pay attention to the return on heavy assets. In practice, we may respectively carry out operation for heavy assets and light assets. Heavy assets is performed the operation for heavy assets, and light assets is carried out the operation for light assets with the objective of surrounding the listing issue. Only in this way can a better business model be achieved.

X. Endeavor to develop the family culture to achieve the objective of international integration

        At present, China’s film market has a large development space, but, compared with America, there is a big gap, thus, how to release the market potential and expand the consumer groups of films is a problem we shall consider. According to the development experience of American film market, all-round family-type internationalized film is our future development direction. China’s box office is difficult to exceed that of America. The main reason is that groups watching films are relatively fixed, and they are young people at the age of 18-28. In order to achieve surpassing, it is required to expand family consumption, make all-round films, highlight family culture, satisfy double customers, and attract children and their parents, so as to really achieve the objective of international integration. In addition, China’s film market has more and more intense competition, with greater and greater risk, and it will enter the middle & low-speed box office growth phase, so our film market cannot just depend on cinemas for promotion, and it shall also realize the transformation from the film industry to the cultural industry. In other words, in the future, there are no pure film companies, or the film company is only a small company. The real big company must be developed into the company of the cultural industry. This can form consumption permeation for family, not just to make some young people falling in love go to watch films, to expand the entire consumer base and industrial space, so as to promote the internationalized level.