18 years of National Day Golden week

In September 1999, the State Council issued the "measures for National Holidays and Commemorative days" and decided to increase the number of statutory public holidays, resulting in three consecutive seven-day long holidays of the Spring Festival, May Day and National Day. Golden week was born.

What has Golden week brought to us over the past 18 years? How can we "change" the Golden week?

Mass leapfrogging and normalization of long holiday tourism

When the first National Day Golden week arrived, the holiday tourism boom sweeping the country was unexpected. According to statistics, the number of tourists across the country reached 28 million in seven days, with a comprehensive tourism income of 14.1 billion yuan.

However, the "astronomical figures" accumulated in seven days at that time can be broken through in less than half a day. In terms of volume, the Golden week has gone over several orders of magnitude.

According to the forecast of the China Academy of Tourism, this year's National Day Golden week, the domestic tourism market will receive 589 million people, with tourism revenue of 478.18 billion yuan. The number of people is more than 20 times that of 18 years ago, and the income has increased more than 30 times.

Numbers are boring, memories and feelings are more real.

Yingzi, who was born in the 1950s, still clearly remembers the scene of the family climbing Mount Tai during the first National Day Golden week. It was the first time for her family to travel. Although the conditions are very limited, the happiness of the family trip and the freshness of the first long holiday remain in memory.

"at that time, accommodation was very difficult, and it took a long queue to finally get it done. Before leaving, the family stewed a pot of chicken as' dry food'. The noodles on the top of the mountain cost 20 yuan a bowl, so we only bought one bowl for the children. " Hideko's story is both arduous and sweet.

Since then, the word "travel" has jumped from the dictionary to life. Later, Yingzi traveled with his family every year. After retiring, she became obsessed with photography and hiking. From the initial trip to Mount Tai to now, Yingzi's footprints have spread all over the world.

"I booked the hotel for the first Golden week by phone. Eighteen years later, I still ordered it by phone. But now it's called cell phone App. " Talking about the changes and constants of the 18-year Golden week, Tao Zengrui, a recently retired Shanghai citizen, said.

From queuing up or calling in a hotel 18 years ago to booking a trip by tapping a mobile phone, travel has changed from hectic to simple.

Ctrip started as a call center, when it was just phone booking and store sales. In the first decade of the new century, the tourism industry has shifted from offline to online, and people's way of booking tourism products has shifted from store consultation and booking to computer Internet and independent booking.

Since 2010, the emergence of smart phones has brought new changes, and the way to achieve tourism has experienced another revolution. At present, Ctrip App has been downloaded more than 2.3 billion times, and about 70% of the transaction volume comes from mobile.

Liu Simin, vice president of the Tourism Branch of the China Future Research Association, analyzed that the hot scene of the Golden week has not changed since the first day. With the upgrading of people's demand for quality of life, travel has become very simple. The rapid growth of the tourism industry represented by the Golden week is the most intuitive manifestation of the achievements of reform and opening up.

The traffic is more convenient and the travel becomes easier.

"it's getting more and more convenient. When I got married here more than a decade ago, I climbed four mountains to see the road." During the National Day, Liu Hong, who was doing business in Fuzhou, organized the whole family to visit their relatives in Shanghang County, Longyan, their hometown.

During the Golden week 18 years ago, Longyan was only the extension of the Eagle-Xiamen Railway, and the train came to the end when it reached the Xinluo District of Longyan. "at that time, Longyan Station only had three pairs of passenger cars a day, but now 60 bullet trains are not enough." Qiu Ping, director of Lao Longyan Station, told reporters.

"with high-speed rail, more people go out and more people come in." Lin Yu, a staff member of Longyan Tourism Bureau, said.

Eighteen years ago, "high-speed rail" was unknown. Today, the high-speed railway has been extended to 20,000 kilometers. On October 1st alone, the railway sent more than 14.4 million passengers, a record high in a single day, and even exceeded the peak of the Spring Festival travel season.

At the same time, roads, the "biggest force" of Chinese holiday travel, are also expanding. In 1999, only 10,000 kilometers of expressways were built in the country, but by the end of last year, it had jumped to 96000 kilometers, ranking first in the world.

The rapid extension of highways is largely due to the popularity of cars. Since the reform and opening up, the pace of cars entering families has been accelerated. Data show that the number of cars in China has exceeded 184 million and has entered the automobile society.

With cars and roads, as a kind of "self-designed life"-self-driving travel develops rapidly. In 2015, of the about 4 billion domestic tourists, self-driving trips accounted for more than 58.5%, reaching 2.34 billion. The National Tourism Administration predicts that by the end of the 13th five-year Plan, the number of self-driving tourists will reach 5.8 billion, accounting for more than 70 per cent of domestic tourists.

Sighing that there are also civil aviation people who have changed greatly. On October 1, 1999, Terminal 2 of the Capital Airport began trial operation. Guo Wenbin, senior business manager of the Operation Control Center of the Capital Airport, recalled that at that time, there were only more than 400 flights a day at the airport, and the number of passengers during the peak period was only 60,000 to 70,000, and most people had no awareness of traveling by air during the long holiday.

"now there are nearly 1700 flights a day, with more than 200,000 passengers. Beijing Terminal 3 is no longer enough, and now we are starting to build a new airport." He said.

Other hardware facilities for tourism quickly keep up. By the end of last year, there were 15000 star hotels, 27000 travel agencies and more than 20, 000 scenic spots.

With the convenience of transportation and the gradual completion of tourism facilities, people can go farther and play longer. In the first half of the year, the number of domestic tourists reached 2.236 billion, an increase of 10.47 percent over the same period last year; the income reached 1.88 trillion yuan, an increase of 13.72 percent; and the number of outbound tourists reached 59.03 million, equivalent to the total population of Italy.

Policy helps leisure, and people are more and more able to "play"

Today, although it is not to the point of "go on and go", it has become a fact that half of the population has traveled during the Golden week.

Wei Xiang, associate professor of the Institute of Financial Strategy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who has studied holiday economy for a long time, believes that Golden week, as a successful holiday reform policy and system innovation in China, has made great achievements over the past 18 years. In the first 10 years, Golden week played a great role in boosting domestic demand and promoting consumption; in recent years, under the background of holiday reform and a series of national policies to promote tourism, the tourism environment has become more and more standardized, and Golden week has released greater dividends.

In recent years, aiming at national tourism, the state has taken a series of important decisions and issued the first outline of National Tourism and Leisure (2013mi 2022), which establishes tourism as a strategic pillar industry of the national economy. Following the formal implementation of the first Tourism Law, the State Council issued several opinions on promoting the Reform and Development of Tourism in 2014, and adopted some opinions on further promoting Tourism Investment and consumption in 2015, elevate the development of tourism to the national strategic level.

Industry supervision is also being gradually updated and improved. Since the beginning of this year alone, the revised regulations on travel agencies have been implemented, and the measures for the management of tourism safety will also come into effect on December 1, 2016.

In order to crack down on such chaotic phenomena as low-cost tourism and uncivilized tourism that have not been cured for a long time in the industry, the National Tourism Administration has issued opinions on cracking down on the organization of "unreasonable low-price tourism" and interim measures for the management of records of uncivilized tourism behavior. the tourism market is more standardized and orderly, and the degree of civilization of tourists has also been greatly improved.

Wei Xiang believes that the state's efforts to promote the development of tourism are unprecedented in strength, depth and breadth. A series of regulations and policies provide a strong legal basis for rectifying tourism chaos and creating a good tourism environment. Various localities are also actively innovating to create a better environment for tourism development, strive to implement the paid vacation system for employees, encourage off-peak vacations, and stimulate tourism consumption demand. In order to resolve tourism disputes efficiently, tourism police or circuit courts have been established in Guangxi, Anhui, Henan, Yunnan, Hainan and other places.

With the standardization of tourism environment and the abundance of tourism products, people are more and more able to "play". Customized tours, parent-child tours, country tours, cultural tours, and even take advantage of the Golden week to look at houses and buy homes. People have more diverse choices to travel during the Golden week.

Li Shengwen, head of Tuniu customized Tourism Department, said that the personalized demand of the current tourism market is becoming more and more obvious. Whether online or offline, it will be an inevitable trend to constantly develop new personalized tourism products driven by big data. This is also the inevitable choice to make leisure tourism in Golden week more orderly and diversified.

What does not change is the heat, but what changes is the pursuit.

In the past 18 years, although the "grand occasion" of "blocking every festival" and "the sea of people" has not changed, the growing tourism demand, the increasingly perfect tourism market and the transportation extending in all directions have made people enthusiastic about Golden week. People look forward to Golden week, enjoy it, and "complain" about it. Standing in the rising era of mass tourism, in order to enhance the people's sense of achievement of the Golden week in the future, no matter the government, tourism or tourists, need to be prepared.

"with the continuous upgrading of people's demand for tourism and leisure, Golden week, as a holiday arrangement, urgently needs to get out of the halo of the original policy and release a larger time dividend through holiday adjustment to usher in the second spring of the policy." Wei Xiang said.

Liu Simin said that the shortage of long holidays is becoming a bottleneck in the development of tourism. We have formed a "barrier lake" with a huge demand for travel time, so it will burst every long holiday.

"Tourism has to meet two conditions: one is rich and the other is leisure. With the continuous improvement of living standards, the former element has been met, and now the main pain point is time." Yang Shengbing, director of the Supervision and Management Department of Hefei Tourism Bureau, said that in the future, while promoting the guarantee of annual leave, we should implement various vacation systems, and explore more flexible vacation methods to turn "gathering" tourism into "decentralized" tourism, so as to solve the number one problem restricting the healthy development of Golden week.

People's concept of tourism is also quietly changing. In the past, the situation of relying on travel agencies and tour guides to dominate the world and taking tourist attractions as a single object has turned to self-help tourism, experience tour and customized tour. At the same time, "consumption upgrading" has become the main theme of tourism. Ctrip predicts that during this year's National Day Golden week, the per capita consumption of outbound tourists will exceed 8000 yuan, while domestic tourists will spend more than 800 yuan.

However, in the face of these changes, the ideal "global tourism" pattern has not yet been formed, some local tourist attractions are fighting on their own, and the overall supporting services such as transportation, accommodation, commerce and so on lag behind.

The monitoring data of the China Tourism Academy over the past seven years show that even if Xi'an, Guilin, Huangshan and other places have the "miracle of the world" or the first landscape in the world, however, the number of tourists, tourism income, tourism investment, tourist satisfaction and other indicators are lower than the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration which does not have many wonderful scenic spots.

Dai Bin, director of the China Tourism Academy, believes that tourism is a way of life in other places. In the era of leisure and individual visitors, the market main body and business environment of tourism destinations have become independent factors to attract tourists. Its importance has gone beyond the traditional natural and historical human resources.

While visiting scenic spots, tourists are often keen to experience a different way of life, and are more likely to use public facilities and commercial services that are originally intended for local people to live and play locally. In this sense, vigorously promote the transformation of scenic spot tourism to global tourism mode, integrate resources and form an industry under the guidance of tourism, and realize the transformation from small tourism of a single scenic spot to regional brand tourism. It will be a new task for leisure tourism in Golden week.

Liu Simin believes that if the tourism industry is to develop healthily, it needs a three-pronged approach: the government should do a good job of supervision; if enterprises want to adapt to the market and upgrade their product structure, tourists need to change their consumption concept, not only more than price than quality, but also from the demand side to promote healthy competition and healthy development of the tourism market.