This May Day holiday, "Benxian Travel" became popular.

On the first day of the holiday, data from Ctrip platform showed that county tourism orders increased by nearly 20% year-on-year. Meituan Travel data shows that as of May 1, the number of bookings for five-star hotels in counties increased by 40% year-on-year during the May Day holiday, which was faster than the national market.

"There are treasures everywhere in small counties" and "There are romantic holidays in small towns". On social media platforms, many people share their travel experience in the "May Day" county town.

When more and more people choose to give up traditional popular tourist cities and go to small cities to experience poetry and distance, this not only reflects the change in tourists' consumption concepts, but also a microcosm of county tourism upgrading.

It’s not that you can’t afford to go to big cities, but that the county towns are more cost-effective.

Wu Liyun, executive vice president of the China Culture and Tourism Industry Research Institute of Beijing Second Foreign Languages ​​Institute, said that tourists' consumption is becoming more and more rational, and they prefer high-quality and high-priced tourism experiences. County tourism can not only provide more attractive prices, but also meet tourists' personalized needs for folk culture, intangible cultural heritage experience, local food, etc.

Mafengwo big data shows that in 2024, the number of related content such as "small towns" and "county towns" in the site increased by 44.8% compared with the same period in 2023, and the number of tourists traveling in districts and counties increased by 76.4% compared with the same period in 2023.

In recent years, special tourism models such as "travel with performances", "travel with competitions", and "travel with film and television" have emerged. More and more small cities rely on short videos, film and television, intangible cultural heritage, etc., have become popular in the travel plan list by young people, which has also led to the popularity of county tourism during the holidays.

Facilities continue to be upgraded, and small county towns attract large traffic.

Once upon a time, inconvenient transportation and poor accommodation conditions were bottlenecks that restricted the development of county tourism.

As infrastructure construction continues to accelerate, China has now basically formed the main skeleton of "6-axis, 7 corridors, and 8 channels", covering more than 80% of the country's counties and serving about 90% of the country's economy and population. The county is no longer a long distance, but a poetic destination that can be quickly reached with the help of transportation.

At the same time, brands such as mid-to-high-end hotels and chain catering have accelerated their expansion to low-tier cities, filling the gap in service standardization, and significantly improving county carrying capacity and tourism service levels, realizing the transformation from "client flow" to "retaining customers".

Where the population flows, there is vitality. Tourism can connect upstream and downstream industries such as food, accommodation, transportation, shopping, and entertainment, and give full play to the multiplier effect of one industry prospering and one industry prospering, which will play a comprehensive driving role in economic development.

The National County Tourism Development Research Report 2024 shows that in 2023, the average total tourism revenue of 1,866 counties in my country reached 4.295 billion yuan, and the average total number of tourists received reached 5.0827 million, an increase of 41.19% and 35.18% year-on-year respectively. It fully demonstrates the driving role of county tourism on the local economy.

The rise of "county travel" has brought new opportunities for county cultural tourism and economic development, but how to turn from "Internet celebrity" to long-lasting popularity is a topic facing the county. How to integrate industrial resources and innovate cultural and tourism marketing tests the wisdom of the county.

At present, some local cultural and tourism departments are taking advantage of the "county travel" craze through measures such as enriching product supply and issuing consumption coupons, and changing "small city traffic" to "development retaining volume". Only when local governments take real effort can short-term traffic be transformed into long-term engines that drive regional development.

("Sanlihe" Studio)