Scenic spots keep locals coming back

The Shanghai Wild Animal Park has rolled out a tourism festival and promotional events with Trip.com Group since 2019, and each event has resulted in more than 120,000 tourist visits, according to the park administration.

In particular, the night camping experiences have been popular among family travelers, who can observe nocturnal animal activities at close quarters, stay over at the panda and monkey enclosures, and make breakfast for the giant panda.

Bookings by Shanghai residents have risen from 50 percent before the cooperation to 80 percent, the administration says in a statement.

Tourist consumption after buying the ticket has also improved by 15 percent.

"We found that most of the traditional scenic spots continued to just offer a single entrance ticket," says Ji Yihua, CEO of the online agency's attractions business department.

"To develop a deeper and finer consumer experience and a consumption chain, we cannot just rely on an entrance ticket or meals, but have to dig deeper into the consumers' needs and create demand," Ji says, adding that through joint efforts with scenic spots to create festivals and themed activities, secondary consumption and repurchase can be achieved.

The ticket-plus program focuses on the characteristics of each scenic spot and makes full use of the scattered resources to deliver custom-made travel experiences.

Private tour guidance and car services have also been options offered through the program to help travelers make their decision.

For consumers, the package deal will be cheaper than the total costs if they book several items one at a time, Ji says.

"We're also assisting scenic spots in the creation of multidimensional scenes to upgrade appeal to consumers," he adds.

Tourism products that offer flexibility and combine fragmented experiences are the way to go during the pandemic, but they have to be of high quality and interesting to keep drawing visitors, Ji says.