The epidemic is ruthless, and the tourism industry is in action-the epidemic that has just been experienced and is still in it will involve people from all walks of life, including tourists. In times of crisis, countries and individuals are actively involved in the cause of epidemic prevention and control. Among them, there are not only the support of national policies and regulations, but also the protection of local administrative measures, the maintenance of industry associations, and the * * initiatives among various tourism sub-industries, such as OTA represented by Ctrip, the first trip of the hotel industry, the material support and warm-hearted policy for China residents, the overall situation of the collective closure of scenic spots, the "wartime" response of many transportation enterprises, and the crackdown on hoarding and hoarding by catering commercial enterprises. At the same time, charitable acts represented by individual travelers are everywhere. For example, the protective mask of the tour guide Haitao was donated to the hospital, the hotel owner offered the isolation room, and the elder brother organized the community shopping action team spontaneously. In this sudden epidemic, we have seen too many touching stories. We firmly believe that with the joint efforts of the government, experts, angels in white and all walks of life, a sunny day will surely come soon.

Reflection on the low point of tourism after the catastrophe —— Facing the changed market, the consumption demand of middle-income groups and the development environment in the high-speed period after economic development, should we simply restore the flow (reception times) and quantity (turnover) through marketing and channel reconstruction, or use the current low point to reflect on the problems existing in the development of tourism in the past few years and reflect on immature, radical or outdated tourism investment, development and operation? The above problems are obviously problems that we should seriously consider.

The short-term market rebounded, but the problems still exist-supply mismatch, structural imbalance and inefficient investment.

The demand of middle-income groups changes, and the short-term rebound can't cover up the long-term tourism development problem. Looking back on the impact of SARS on tourism in 2003, we can see that the retaliatory rebound of tourism will be prominent at the end of the year and early next year. By then, there will be a shortage of effective tourism supply, especially during the Golden Week. In response to the short-term rebound of the market, the industry has experienced many events such as SARS, so I won't go into details. However, this can't hide the long-standing problems of tourism-mismatch between supply and demand, imbalance of product structure, overheated and inefficient investment, etc. At the beginning of 2020, the National Bureau of Statistics announced that in 20 19, the per capita GDP of China had exceeded 1 10,000 US dollars, which was 3,000 US dollars short of the per capita standard of primary developed countries defined by the World Bank, that is, it was crossing the threshold of "middle income trap". With the increase of middle-income groups, there will be many changes in leisure consumption demand-leisure demand, theme culture and art demand, social interaction demand, cognitive improvement and continuous learning demand. On the one hand, this is a new opportunity, on the other hand, it also highlights many problems-that is, the structure of China's tourism products is unbalanced, and the mismatch between supply and demand is becoming more and more serious, that is, sightseeing is mostly and leisure is scarce; More hard products, less soft products; There are many beautiful scenery and a thin culture. This structural chronic disease has not slowed down with the tourism investment boom in the past five years, but has become more and more serious. Looking at the three problems of supply and demand, structure and investment mentioned above, it is actually a question, that is, what kind of products do consumers want?

Japanese experience-products need to meet real needs

Lessons from the past-most projects that ignore market demand have failed. According to Japan's development experience, its investment in large-scale tourism projects in the 1970s and 1980s was only in several directions, such as apartment development, villa development and golf hot spring development. Taking the development plan of comprehensive resorts in Japan as an example, due to the increase of per capita income in Japan, domestic consumption demand and balanced trade, tourism and financial policy support, comprehensive resorts have been developed in most parts of the country. These projects all have the same characteristics-they are accompanied by real estate development, super-large-scale, huge investment and need huge passenger flow support. The vision of the project is very beautiful. However, due to the strong implantation of products by the government or external enterprises, the local consumption power, the attraction of product themes, the consumption demand of middle-income groups and other factors have been ignored. In addition, they encountered financial problems such as oil crisis and economic bubble, environmental problems and local conflicts, which eventually led to the shelving or bankruptcy of most of these projects. Even for the opening projects, due to a lot of homogeneous competition and planning, hasty preparation, separation of development and operation, it is difficult to operate in the later stage.

Successful experience-projects that meet demand and rely on superior stock resources have developed well. These products meet the leisure needs of middle-income groups in cities, including cultural and artistic commercial facilities in central cities (Sapporo), theme aquariums (Osaka), leisure art theme shopping streets (Nagoya), industrial leisure and entertainment projects in small cities or villages (theme parks in Tujiuze mining area in Lujiao City), and folk village theme areas created by local culture.

Markets that invest less in effective tourism products will vote with their feet.

Invalid investment is overheated, ignoring the real leisure needs of middle-income groups. On the other hand, the tourism investment craze in China in previous years often started to be held high, drifted slowly in the middle and finally disappeared. For example, the characteristic town project or the scenic spot promotion A project in previous years, driven by the requirements of local political achievements, the demand of enterprises for matching funds and the demand of real estate development, must be led by local governments to jointly develop large enterprises. These projects either lack planning, the theme is not clear, or ignore the reality of industrial development, or are seriously homogenized, without taking care of local characteristic resources and the real needs of consumers, and eventually give up halfway and often blossom everywhere. However, it is undeniable that there are also good projects and products born in the big waves, such as the products made by Mr. and Mr. Chen and their team's Wujiang Village, Chuxinjian and Kaiyuan Senbo. For example, Moganshan meets the sports and leisure projects of middle-income groups based on local resources. This can be described as: jump into the wave of the market to see who can swim (good products), who only has lifebuoys (policies, funds), or none at all. The environment that used to rely on bank loans, policy support and PPP for land development is gone forever. Whether it is a project shelved or bankrupt by some developers, a theme park with free tickets, or a scenic spot that pursues various online celebrity products in an attempt to temporarily retain tourists, it will eventually find itself abandoned by the market.

Tap the Long-term Potential of Stock Market —— Market Differentiation and Market Segmentation to Win the Next Decade

Market differentiation and track segmentation will determine the future development. We can see that on the one hand, a series of scenic spots are delisted and hotels are transformed, on the other hand, urban leisure theme zoos, sports research resorts, parent-child farms and rural resorts are becoming increasingly popular. All this shows a phenomenon, that is, the market is dividing and subdividing. At the end of 20 19, the author heard the same news from tourism bureaus, traditional scenic spots and hotel practitioners: the tourism market is not good this year. It is true that there are economic and environmental factors, but it cannot explain the year-on-year increase in income of other leisure theme scenic spots under the same environment. What does this mean? This shows that the market is diverted and traditional projects show signs of decline.

Future direction-stock resource integration, product integration and "+tourism" innovation

From the perspective of resource supply: balance light and heavy assets and optimize existing assets. At present, there are a lot of inefficient stock assets in China, and there is a lot of room for transformation and upgrading, which is very similar to the situation in Japan at the same stage. In the later period of Japanese economic bubble, a large number of tourism development projects were shelved in the market, and there were many unfinished or half-dead development projects such as tourism real estate, tourism complex and commerce. At that time, Japan's latecomers also gradually revitalized some of them through asset revitalization and new project activation. In view of this, after China experienced the overheated tourism investment in the early stage and the blind development of unclear market segments, the latecomers should buy high-quality assets at low prices, optimize assets, balance the proportion of light and heavy assets and the input-output cycle through asset package division, apartment management, business transformation and other means to control asset quality; On the one hand, taking advantage of industrial integration, introducing other themes such as culture, art and sports, revitalizing old assets and activating new projects.

From the consumer demand side: cross-border integration development, soft and hard development. The consumption demand of middle-income groups has changed obviously in cultural cognition, consumption preference and consumption threshold, which is not only diversified demand, but also diversified consumption. Therefore, the corresponding products and services should be diversified and specialized. However, at present, all products meet the consumption needs of the public or middle-income groups, and there is no product and industry segmentation. For example, based on natural history education and parent-child leisure vacation, virtual reality and outdoor sports leisure, online education and offline parent-child activities, traditional culture integration study vacation, leisure theme complex vacation, etc., are all subdivided track and subdivided project types that meet the needs of middle-income groups. According to the data of the World Tourism Council, the tourism industry 1 yuan tourism consumption can activate the consumption around 4.3 yuan. Therefore, the emerging leisure tourism products can not only meet the consumer demand, but also drive the surrounding new investment, construction, services and other software and hardware industries.

Author Wang Xiaoyu, postdoctoral fellow in tourism economics, associate researcher, special expert of World Tourism Cities Federation (WTCF) and special researcher of Tourism Research Center of China Academy of Social Sciences.

Editor: Wang Yiting