What to save an ancient town that has lost its tourists?

See this picture, do you know which ancient town?

With the vigorous development of the tourism industry, ancient towns are springing up all over the country, but at the same time, similarity is gradually replacing the personality of each ancient town. Regardless of the south and north of the sky, regardless of historical and cultural characteristics, regardless of climate and natural conditions, most of the ancient towns are unified small bridges and flowing water, green stone boards, red lanterns, and even along the streets of the stores selling things are also similar, is it possible that all of the ancient towns are the same manipulator? Of course not.

Why is the country's ancient town

as mass-produced?

While each ancient town in the publicity that has different regional characteristics, historical and cultural, but no matter what kind of culture, we actually see, from the architectural style to the commercial business, from tourism products to snacks, just from the photographs, tourists basically can not tell the difference between these ancient towns, ancient towns across the country seem to be the same factory production out of the standardization of products.

This is from the development of the ancient towns began in 1984, Chen Yifei, who studied in the United States to Zhouzhuang's twin bridges as a material, created a painting entitled "hometown memories", this painting makes Zhouzhuang a hit, followed by tourists from all over the country to come. Under the demonstration effect of Zhouzhuang, Jiangsu and Zhejiang Wuzhen, Tongli, Xitang and other places have embarked on the road of tourism town. At the same time, the west of Lijiang Dayan ancient town because of its unique folk culture gradually for tourists to pay attention to, in 1997, the success of the bid for heritage has made its reputation, and quickly among the forefront of the development of tourism in ancient towns. Driven by this wave of ancient town tourism, China began to develop large-scale tourism in ancient towns, and many of these ancient towns are pre-fire up the Jiangnan water town as a reference, so many ancient towns naturally look the same.

Why are the snacks and souvenirs sold the same? This is also driven by commercial interests.

In the early stages of the development of the town, along the street stores of the clientele is partly oriented to the locals, the other part is oriented to the tourists, and tourists are often greater than the spending power of the locals, facing the tourists store profitability is stronger, along with the enhancement of the town's popularity, the number of tourists has increased dramatically, more and more stores will be shifted to provide services for tourists, the locals are obviously not able to afford to increase the price level, and then will be move out one after another, and stores are naturally what high profitability to do, which will lead to increased homogenization, so tourists, no matter which ancient towns to go to, many snacks are the same, so tourists will also feel around the ancient towns are becoming more and more commercialized, the loss of the original cultural characteristics.

Lijiang Old Town is a typical case, the booming tourism industry caused a large number of Lijiang residents to move out of the traditional ethnic culture suffered an impact, so the first few years of tourists on the commercialization of the Lijiang question endless. Many other ancient towns have not Lijiang's popularity, but also all commercialization, tourists go after the natural spit, these ancient towns will be increasingly poor reputation, in the long run, the natural will gradually wither.

How to save

Losing tourists of the ancient town?

For the original concept of tourism in the ancient towns, governments around the world is also hoping to promote the comprehensive growth of the local economy, to enhance the standard of living of the local people, however, it is not the case, looking at the development of the country's small towns and towns of the ancient city, continue to maintain the commercial vitality of the tourism of only a handful of most of the towns and towns of the number of tourists plummeting, the business is cold, and some towns and towns of unsustainable operations ultimately fell into an empty city, how to save these increasingly How to save these declining ancient cities and towns?

First of all, the adjustment of the business model.

In the previous business model, the government in order to promote tourism development, in the early stages of the general will give investors a certain policy to support the funds or preferential prices for land concessions, while the ancient towns can easily invest hundreds of millions of dollars, relying only on the development of the tourism industry is obviously unable to achieve a balance of investment, so many investors in the ancient town project will be accompanied by the real estate business, the original this real estate to the tourism blood transfusion, tourism driven real estate Sales model can be said to be the best of both worlds, but the actual landing, investors in order to quickly recover costs, will focus on the real estate business, while ignoring the tourism, resulting in a scattered operation and management.

Tanzhou ancient city, for example, the opening of the first set of tickets 60 yuan, some tourists are discouraged by the price, in order to attract tourists and open the ticket-free activities, and then wavered between the charges and free of charge, In addition, according to Shandong TV reports, Tancheng Ancient City scenic area of the scenic area to the merchants to sit on the ground, the original scenic area and the earliest merchants signed a contract of affiliation, the contract stipulates that the stores to be stationed in the way of taking Draw the way joint venture. Later unilaterally tore up the cooperation agreement, the scenic area not only increased the percentage of draw, but also an additional increase in the property fee, or else not allowed to be stationed in the scenic area, which can be seen in the operation of the chaos.

In fact, in the development and operation of the ancient town, the need to explore the government-led, market operation, social capital investment, civil power to participate in the model, integration of multiple forces, to realize the *** birth, *** integration, *** build, *** enjoy.

The second is cultural excavation and innovation.

The tourists choose to go to the ancient city to play, or hope to feel the local cultural heritage, experience the simple folk, if along the street are foreign merchants, the national uniform snacks, naturally, can not see where the local culture, where the characteristics.

The intangible cultural heritage of the country is widely distributed, varied, rich in connotation, the town can start from the local non-legacy, mining local folk characteristics, cultural characteristics, these characteristics can be combined with the combination of interactive projection, VR / AR, holographic and other high-tech means, from the sky, land, water, different spatial dimensions to cut, to build an immersive, contextualized tourism scenarios.

Finally, the adjustment of the layout of the industry.

All over the ancient towns and small towns are naturally aware of the drawbacks brought about by excessive commercialization, how to change the status quo of a thousand cities? You can import new cultural business, vigorously develop cultural creation, non-genetic practice, folk experience, night economy and other business, Lijiang, for example, 2019, Lijiang began to the core area of the ancient city of the business of the market directory list type management. Sixteen types of projects, such as Internet cafes, electronic toys, and modern construction materials, are banned from market access; the bar industry is categorized as a restricted category. In the control of excessive commercialization at the same time, cultural inheritors, craftsmen to open the museum to teach art, such as promoting, displaying the characteristics of traditional culture stores are included in the category of encouragement, not only the approval of all the way to the green light, but also can apply for public housing rent reductions, project subsidies and a series of preferential policies. Through the implementation of the policy to avoid excessive commercialization of the old city.

In short, the old town tourism want to maintain a long life, must build their own characteristics, innovation with the times, these are the real moat of the development of the old town.