The outbreak of COVID-19 has significantly affected the tourism industry. Although the epidemic situation has generally turned the corner, business recovery is still relatively slow. Under these circumstances, and subject to local conditions, innovative marketing methods adopted to attract visitors and pre-sales are particularly important. Many of Yintai Tourism’s scenic spots have, according to their own characteristics, adopted multiple methods such as thematic virtual tours, short video live streaming and integrated marketing to expedite business recovery.

Since its reopening, Yintai Tourism’s Yanmen Pass Scenic Area has leveraged festival tie-ins, and carried out thematic live streamings such as “In Celebration of International Women’s Day - The development of the status of women as heroes” on Toutiao, TikTok and Kuaishou. It also organized more than a dozen thematic live streaming activities around the scenic area, aggregating more than 200,000 viewers. These had a positive impact on promoting the scenic area as well as ultimately bringing visitors to the area.

At Xikou Scenic Area, meanwhile, the operations team integrated the local tourism resources of Fenghua, Ningbo, and rolled out a number of travel routes for hiking and spring outings.

To meet different tourist demands, the scenic areas, working together with local tourism enterprises, launched a number of discounted admission packages, such as introducing special admission ticket policies for tour agencies across the country, and adjusting the “one free for every group of five visitors” admission discount policy for visitors in general.

In addition, online marketing continued to show a stronger pull effect. Both Fangyan Scenic Area and Xikou Scenic Area introduced a RMB9.90 cable car ticket sell-out event. The tickets were snapped up within half an hour, implying huge pool of potential consumers.

Indeed, Yintai Tourism’s scenic areas are exploring and attempting various marketing approaches, whether through direct cash conversion or indirect promotions, and are working hard to enhance their own characteristics and meet different consumer demand. The popularity of Yintai Tourism’s scenic areas will improve over time. We look forward to more novel marketing approaches with more distinct characteristics which will help the scenic areas recover faster in the post-epidemic market.