Xinhuanet sports CHENGDU, April 29 (Wang Jianbing) sports is an important resource for developing tourism industry, and tourism is an important driving force for promoting the development of sports industry. In recent years, sports and tourism have shown a trend of integration in Sichuan, becoming the booster of economic and social development. Sichuan is a large sample enough to observe the deep integration of sports and tourism in western China.
Seeking development: Cultivating New Dynamic Energy
The era of mass tourism is coming, and the development of China’s tourism industry has entered a new stage. People are no longer satisfied with sightseeing, and sports tourism has gradually become a fashion. All kinds of sports have also been upgraded from pure physical will exercise to urban cultural experience.
“The sports tourism in Sichuan province is developing rapidly, and the ‘sports + travel’ mode is rising all over the province.” The relevant person in charge of Sichuan Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism told the media that in the process of deepening the development of global tourism in Sichuan province, “Sports Plus” combined with the advantages of tourism resources to create a distinctive sports tourism brand, it is becoming a major feature of the tourism market.
For example, Chengdu double heritage marathon in 2019, through the three heritage tracks of world cultural heritage, world natural heritage and world irrigation project heritage, showed runners the heavy historical context of the land of abundance. As the hometown of Deng Xiaoping, Guang’an, Sichuan province focused on the red elements in the 2018 Guang’an red marathon of Yundong China. Running friends set out from the tourist center of Deng Xiaoping’s hometown scenic spot and passed through famous city attractions and roads such as Xiaoping’s hometown Road and Xinhua Road to have a deep experience of local city life and red culture.
Sports Tourism conforms to the new market demand and is of great significance to economic development.
In 2017, the “The Belt and Road Initiative” sports tourism development action plan (2018-2020) jointly issued by the National Tourism Administration and the State General Administration of Sports pointed out that vigorously developing sports tourism is a rich tourism product system, the inevitable requirement of expanding tourism consumption space and promoting the transformation and upgrading of tourism is the inevitable choice to revitalize sports resources, realize the deep integration of national fitness and national health, and promote the quality and efficiency of sports industry, it is of great significance for cultivating new momentum of economic development and expanding new space for economic development.
Sichuan, as a major tourism province, has abundant natural, ethnic and cultural tourism resources. It is imperative to cultivate new economic growth points through the new business mode of sports tourism.
Seeking breakthrough: force supply side
Looking at the whole country, sports tourism projects are not uncommon. How to skillfully integrate local products, attract more participants, and give participants more and better experience is an important topic. In this regard, Sichuan has played a “new trick”.
“If you want to have a good scenery, come to the Four Girls Mountain cross-country.” This is the evaluation of runners on the cross-country running around the mountain. Located in the Siguniang Mountain scenic area of Aba Tibetan and Qiang autonomous prefecture, Sichuan province, it has a variety of landscape resources such as snowy mountains, rocks, meadows, lakes, forests, etc. In order to launch the brand, Siguniang Mountain cross-country race around the mountain set up the highest supply station with an altitude of 4390 meters in the whole race in 2017, which is the best place for runners to watch the sunrise and the starry sky. It is time of sunrise magnificent here. The Sunshine Golden Mountain at dusk and the starry sky galaxy very late at night can be captured by cameras one by one. It is praised as “the most beautiful supply station” by runners “. Arriving at the supply station before dawn, waiting for the sunrise with the starry sky became another expectation of runners for the competition.
The Creative Marathon carried out in Pingle ancient town, Qionglai City played a role crossing “. The creative run of Pingle ancient town takes the love story between Sima Xiangru and Zhuo Wenjun as the background to set the creative entrance. Runners need to cross the Lesan Bridge and Xingle Bridge, run across the western Sichuan folk culture garden, complete a series of tasks such as blessing ribbon, painting by the river, tasting the special food of the town, etc. It seems to be a creative breakthrough. In fact, Pingle ancient town has planted Western Sichuan history and culture in the marathon, which can penetrate deeper with culture and nourish the connotation of events and scenic spots.
“In the domestic marathon I have participated in, there are almost no local specialties as supplies. This Leshan schedule supply station provides many local specialties, the most impressive ones are bobo chicken and spicy chicken feet. There is a food supply station every other period. It is very enjoyable to run for a while.” Runners from Afar spoke highly of Leshan food. The 2018 Leshan International Half Marathon has created a “food track”, heal-down and toe-up beef, sweet duck, Bobo chicken, jellied bean curd and other food along with the scenery with mountains and rivers all the way, for runners to enjoy. After the event, runners prefer to stop in Leshan and continue to taste delicious food. With the help of sports events, Leshan tourism has gathered a lot of popularity. Food and night scenes have become the reasons for people to stay, and they also make Leshan “famous mountains, famous Buddhas, celebrities, the unique charm of famous city” has been fully demonstrated.
Under the national sports tourism background of blossoming, providing more kinds of sports tourism products with more distinctive features is the key to avoid homogeneous competition and cultivate the market. Sichuan’s experience is to create brand characteristics with characteristic resources + Sports.
Look at the trend: look at the new model
compared with the presentation form of the project, sports tourism should pay more attention to the underlying logic in the project selection. There are two main types of sports tourism projects in Sichuan.
The first category is Sports Competition performance industry + tourism. There are generally two types of this development mode: one is competition-watching sports tourism and the other is competition-participating sports tourism. The tour mode of watching games generally focuses on sports events with high professional level, attracting tourists to travel and watch games in the host place. Taking Wusheng as an example, Wusheng has built the only bicycle motocross competition venue in China that meets the Olympic standards. It has successively held a series of related events and built a tourism gathering area for sports events.
However, the competition tourism mode generally develops the competition into more experiential products, such as marathon, hiking, fishing, rock climbing, skiing, etc. on the competition projects with low degree of professionalism. In recent years, major international marathon organizers have also launched tourism themes to attract Chinese runners, such as the statewide cherry blossom marathon in South Korea, the French Podol red wine marathon, and the Phuket marathon in Thailand.
The second category is Sports fitness and leisure industry + tourism, which combines leisure sports with industrial elements in tourism industry, such as holiday hotels, food and entertainment, etc. This kind of development model is represented by Panzhihua. It is understood that in order to promote the development of the “Health Care + Sports” industry, Panzhihua has completed the overall planning and design of the 300-kilometer mountaineering and fitness trail, and the slogan of “national sunshine health care tourism destination” will be louder.
On the structure of sports tourism products, Yang Qiang, associate professor of management of leisure sports department of Chengdu Institute of Physical Education, told the media that experiential sports tourism products should be regarded as the fist products of sports tourism industry. Event tourism products are more suitable as supporting products of sports tourism.
“According to different market demands, Sichuan should learn from international experience in the next step and cultivate and develop medium and high-end sports tourism products with consumption leading characteristics such as sailing, golf and equestrian in conditional areas, create a sports tourism demonstration area and demonstration base with regional characteristics.” Yang Qiang said.
The integration of sports, culture and tourism is the general trend. The cooperation agreement on promoting the integrated development of sports tourism signed by the State General Administration of Sports and the National Tourism Administration proposes that by 2020, the total number of sports tourism will reach 1 billion, accounting for 15% of the total number of tourism, the total consumption scale of sports tourism exceeded 1 trillion yuan, accounting for nearly 15% of the total consumption scale of tourism. Behind the two 15% goals is the huge space for the development of China’s sports tourism industry.