The domestic tourism service environment needs to be improved.
One of the surveys on inbound tourism.
Editor's note: On November 24, China announced a trial trial of unilateral visa exemption for ordinary passport holders from six countries: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and Malaysia. As soon as the news was announced, searches related to inbound tourism skyrocketed. Relevant departments said that in the future, they will further increase the introduction of policies to promote the recovery of the industry.
Since the beginning of this year, compared with the rapid recovery and continued popularity of domestic and outbound travel, the recovery of inbound tourism has been relatively slow. Inbound tourism is widely regarded as an incremental opportunity in the tourism market and the key to the balanced development of the tourism industry. In view of the current blockages and shortcomings in the inbound tourism market, this newspaper will launch a series of reports on "Investigation of Inbound Tourism Issues" from now on.
On November 17, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism held a press conference on China's inbound tourism policy, introducing the recent policy measures to optimize visas and improve the facilitation of inbound tourism. At this time, more than half a year has passed since China announced the resumption of tourist visas to China in March.
During this period, inbound tourism has restarted, but the recovery has been much slower than that of domestic travel. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, in the first half of the year, the number of inbound tourists received by travel agencies nationwide was 47780,000, compared to 856 in the first half of 2019160,000 person-times, the huge data gap reflects the weak recovery of the industry. At the same time, practitioners have also encountered unexpected situations when receiving foreign tourists: they can't grab tickets to scenic spots, there are fewer English-speaking waiters in hotels, and foreigners "can't" pay ...... when buying things
People can't help but ask: how to solve the problem of inbound tourism?
Hard-to-grab tickets.
When guests go to Beijing, they can't make an appointment for the Forbidden City tickets, so they can only take Guozijian insteadWhen I arrived in Shaanxi, I couldn't make an appointment with the Terracotta Warriors and Horses, so I could only take the stele forest instead. Zhou Xiaoguang, general manager of Guilin Tang Dynasty International Travel Service Co., Ltd., said that tickets are a "roadblock" in front of tourists.
Zhang Weili is from Malaysia, and in October this year, after finishing an official trip to Beijing, he left himself a few days for free activities. "I came to know that now I have to make an appointment to go to the scenic spot, each scenic spot has its own reservation procedure and interface, not to mention the trouble, and some have not yet found the appointment option for foreign passports. ”
During the "Eleventh" holiday, Li Li, a tour guide of a travel agency in Hongqiao, Shanghai, took foreign tourists to Harbin and also encountered embarrassing things. "We made an appointment for tickets, but after arriving at the entrance of the scenic spot, the staff still asked each guest to scan the code and fill in their names and passport numbers, and check them one by one before they were released. Li Li said.
Sun Mengyang, a professor at the School of Tourism of Beijing Union University, who has been engaged in inbound tourism research for a long time, found that the problem of ticket reservation for scenic spots has plagued practitioners. "The planning of inbound tourism is strong, and the tourism products on the shelves of foreign group companies are usually determined a year ago, but now the reservation cycle of domestic scenic spots is usually 3 days to a week, which will cause the previously determined points to be unable to go because of the lack of tickets. Sun Mengyang said that in this case, foreign tour operators are worried about default, so they will naturally carefully consider putting Chinese tourism products on the shelves.
Broken service.
He Fei is an English-speaking tour guide for a travel agency in Guilin. She told reporters that the original four-star and five-star hotels in Guilin have service staff with English communication skills, and many people have changed careers in the three years of the epidemic, and guests have come to the tour guide to translate if they have questions. She also found that the services that used to be provided by the hotel, such as Western cuisine and currency exchange, have largely disappeared.
Sun Mengyang said that the tourism market has undergone drastic changes in recent years, the demand for domestic travel has exploded, and many hotels are more willing to receive domestic guests with higher "flexibility" in booking, and the service to foreign tourists has "shrunk" for various reasons.
Zhang Weili really wanted to experience the homestay on this trip, "I saw a few good homestays on the foreign reservation **, I don't know if it is a deviation in the business information or other reasons, I asked **, but the other party told me that they are not qualified to receive foreigners."
Accommodation and catering are important links in the inbound tourism chain, which need to be reshaped and integrated urgently. Sun Mengyang suggested that inbound tourism companies can focus on customer needs, find long-term hotel strategy providers or consider cooperating with tourism platforms. At the same time, the policy should give more support to the homestay industry and international youth hostels, further open up foreign-related reception, and better meet the accommodation needs of inbound tourists.
China is a big country of food, and more and more foreign tourists are looking forward to experiencing "gluttonous tours" in China. "Most restaurants in China have not yet been internationalized for foreign tourists, providing bilingual menus, training staff in English, and preparing Western-style tableware, which are convenient measures for foreigners, so that they can feel at home. Sun Mengyang said.
Barriers to be broken.
Inbound tourism has a long planning cycle, and last year there were only a few or no Chinese tourism products on sale in overseas source countries, so it is difficult to see large-scale foreign tour groups now. Xu Xiaolei, chief brand officer of CYTS Holdings, said. In addition to objective factors, the question that should really be paid attention to now is: Is our tourism environment attractive enough?This attraction is reflected in many details, and in general terms, the ease of access to tourism services.
Zhang Weili said that he took the high-speed rail in China, and the experience was very good, but the fly in the ointment was that he could only queue up at the manual window to get a ticket using his passport, and he could not directly swipe the ticket to enter the turnstile, and he had to pass the manual ticket inspection and passport inspection. "Passport identification is clearly attached to the turnstiles, but I don't understand why foreign tourists can't go through the machine to verify the bus like Chinese passengers. Zhang Weili said that he saw a shared bicycle on the street and wanted to experience it, "but after scanning the code, he found that he needed real-name authentication, so he couldn't operate it." ”
Sun Mengyang saw two "barriers": First, China's Internet is developing rapidly, and mobile payment, online ticket booking, and bicycle sharing have brought a lot of convenience to the Chinese people. However, there is a "barrier" between this convenience and foreign tourists, and how to make inbound tourists experience the convenience of Internet services needs to be resolved. Second, opening up all links of international and domestic transportation, so that foreign tourists can enjoy the convenience and speed of travel, is also an important part of the reconstruction of the inbound tourism industry chain.
planting grass".
Zhou Xiaoguang began to get busy, mainly going to foreign exhibitions to promote Chinese tourist destinations and products. He called it a necessary foreshadowing for a resurgence. CYTS has recently listed "going out" as a key task and actively marketing in overseas markets.
'Going out' to actively showcase the colorful and earth-shaking changes of China's tourism is the primary market strategy to be adopted by inbound tourism. Sun Mengyang believes that in addition to "going out", it is also necessary to "invite in". Overseas travel wholesalers** can only improve their confidence in promoting and selling Chinese itineraries by experiencing China's tourism products first-hand.
We are absolutely confident that China is rich in tourism resources that many countries cannot match. Zhou Xiaoguang said that in the past, foreigners had limited knowledge of Chinese tourist destinations, but now the Internet has opened up a broader horizon for them.
When Zhou Xiaoguang communicated with foreign counterparts, he mentioned two small things: first, the elephant migration incident that occurred in Yunnan a few years ago unexpectedly gained wide attention from Japanese netizens and enhanced the popularity of Yunnan;Second, the English search popularity of Chongqing has risen recently, and the keywords are "hot pot" and "Hongya Cave", which are very specific words, which are due to the fact that some short ** promoting Chongqing have "planted grass" for netizens. Zhou Xiaoguang deeply realized that it is imperative to carry out Internet marketing: foreign young people also like to brush up on short**, and tourism promotion should change the way and method, and use the angle that foreigners are interested in and the language they like to "plant grass".
The solution to the problem.
Looking back on the development process of China's inbound tourism, at the beginning of reform and opening up, compared with domestic tourism and outbound tourism, inbound tourism occupied a "leading" position, which played a leading role in the construction of the entire tourism industry system. Time has passed, and inbound tourism has entered a bottleneck period for various reasons, and it has fallen into a trough in the past three years.
In the current international and domestic environment, it is necessary to re-understand the role of inbound tourism. Zhang Hui, dean of the Modern Tourism Research Institute of Beijing Jiaotong University, said that inbound tourism is not only an important starting point for promoting the development of services, but also an important means to show the image of a great country and improve the international development environment, which should receive more attention at the national level.
Not long ago, the General Office of the People's Republic of China issued the "Several Measures to Release the Potential of Tourism Consumption and Promote the High-quality Development of the Tourism Industry", which specifically put forward 6 specific measures to strengthen the work of inbound tourism, pointing directly to the pain points of inbound tourism.
Policies need to be implemented, and confidence needs to be reinvigorated. "At present, many problems in the inbound tourism market cannot be solved by enterprises themselves, and they need to be guided by the first 'visible hand'. Sun Mengyang believes that under the guidance of the macro strategy, the relevant departments should form a joint force, truly from the perspective of inbound tourists, in-depth research, systematic combing, one by one to find the pain points that inconvenience tourists, and find pragmatic solutions.
Economic reporter Zhang Xue.