Xinhua News Agency, sports, Chengdu, June 17 (Wang Meng) Zhang Ting, who has been running for 5 years, appeared at the scene of the 2019 Guiyang marathon on the morning of June 16. As the starting gun rang at 7:30, I went to Guanshan East Road in Cool Guiyang with more than 25,000 people. After the game, she also planned a trip to Maotai town in Guizhou with her running partner.
Like Zhang Ting, more and more people choose to “run away” on a weekend and experience a sports event with family or friends. All kinds of directions indicate that along with the new fashion of sports experience tourism, Chinese marathon is creating “Mini small holiday”.
The cross-regional flow of people
The “small holiday” brings about the large-scale flow of people. As a group event, there is no sports like Marathon, which involves tens of thousands of people. Similarly, an influential marathon attracts running enthusiasts inside and outside the province where the event is held like a magnet.
Last weekend, the official website of China Marathon showed that there were three marathon events and one cross-country race running in Guiyang, Shuozhou, Yantai and Xi’an respectively, which also brought tens of thousands of people to flow in the region.
Zhang Ting is from Zhuhai. Choosing to run the 2019 Guiyang marathon is a decision after discussing with the partners of the group. They booked a high-speed rail ticket online one week in advance for 26 people on this trip, the day before the horse racing, he set out at eight o’clock in the morning and arrived at more than two o’clock in the afternoon.
National convenient high-speed railway transportation has driven the inter-city circulation of the crowd. According to the data analysis report of your horse in 2018, 44 percent of all horse contestants come from outside Guizhou province, among which Guangdong, Yunnan, Sichuan, and Guiyang are located within 6 hours of hoop, province or municipality such as Chongqing and Hunan are the main sources of runners outside the province.
In this flow, the average stay time of most runners in the competition place is 2-3 days. Besides horse racing, famous scenic spots and popular snacks in the city have become the first choice of “clock-in.
Higher than daily centralized consumption
the flow of people means centralized consumption. From the perspective of the whole country, at the moment of the blowout of marathon events, nearly 10 large-scale marathon events are fired at the same time on average every week, which brings the most intuitive effect that the consumption mode of sports + tourism is running normally, the drive for related industries is also considerable.
According to the marathon big data released by the Tian Association, the average consumption amount of runners in 2018 was 12287 yuan, of which 42% was used to register for the competition and ranked first. The expenses included registration fee, transportation fee, accommodation and local consumption.
I first met Zhang Ting, who was visiting a sports equipment Display shop in Guiyang Marathon Expo after receiving the competition bag. The marketing campaign of buying one and getting one free on site attracted her and her peers.
Dozens of road running related companies participated in the Expo, involving all aspects of the marathon industry chain such as clothing and equipment, energy supply, track photography, etc. Exhibitors generally said that during the three-day exhibition, the sales performance was very good.
During the last Guiyang marathon, the runner’s consumption of transportation, accommodation, catering, sightseeing and shopping constituted the direct economic consumption part of the event, among them, the average consumption of foreign competitors is 2273 yuan per person, while the average direct consumption of local players in Guiyang is 471 yuan per person. According to statistics, through holding a marathon, the consumption of sports tourism in Guiyang city has reached more than 4900 million yuan.
Happiness and sense of acquisition
People who have participated in the marathon will feel the same way. When tens of thousands of people gather at the starting point of the marathon and are ready for common goals, it will make the whole person excited.
Different from the past leisure tourism, marathon “small long vacation” is more driven by many factors such as people’s pursuit of a better life and the current situation of vacation system, it reflects happiness and sense of acquisition.
“From the perspective of supply-side reform, the consumption structure needs to be transformed and upgraded to seek new development modes. Tourism and leisure industry, especially experience economy, is the direction of breakthrough in the future.” At the national two sessions last year, Zhang Jian, dean of the School of Sports Leisure and Tourism of Beijing Sports University, said.
Experience tour is replacing sightseeing tour and becoming a part of people’s growing good life, while sports tourism represented by marathon has become the most intense experience project at present.
For runners from all over the world, to go to a marathon, it is important to meet friends. This happiness is reflected in the communication between people, cities, people and nature.
Jing Zhiwei from Ningbo chooses a marathon every weekend. So far, he has run the Guang’an international red marathon, Hengdian marathon, Shaoxing International Marathon, etc, he said frankly that the greatest sense of being able to run a marathon comes from experiencing different urban customs and the lively and pleasant atmosphere during the whole horse race.
There are data: China road running sports Report
“with the rapid development of road running sports in China, sports and fitness activities represented by road running and aimed at health, it is becoming an important carrier for Chinese people to pursue a better life.” Wang Nan, secretary of the Party Committee of the track and field Sports Management Center of the State General Administration of Sports and vice chairman of the China Track and Field Association, said at the 2019 International Tian Lian road running conference on May 31.
According to the data of the China Association of field associations, the number of road running events with more than 800 people nationwide reached 1581 historically in 2018, with a total competition scale of 5.83 million. According to the proportion of 20 percent of athletes from other provinces, there are more than one million people every year, and spatial structure are carried out for horse racing. According to public data, the annual total consumption of China Marathon in 2018 reached 17.8 billion yuan, the annual total consumption driven by events reached 28.8 billion yuan, and the annual total output reached 74.6 billion yuan.
China has nearly 1.4 billion people, and there is enough space for sports population waiting to be awakened by road running. Wang Nan mentioned in his speech, “China Road running has extremely gorgeous colors, every city marathon is a perfect combination of the city’s cultural landscape, regional characteristics and the city’s appearance.”
In this national movement, the participation of ordinary runners is more about competing with themselves. In addition to this kind of competition, through the interaction with citizens in another city for a short time, we can adjust our mood and meet our goals such as health and self-realization.
With the continuous development of China’s social economy, structural innovation on the supply side of holidays has become inevitable. At the moment when people pursue a healthy, positive and upward lifestyle, the phenomenon that weekends are transformed into “micro” small holidays by Marathons will also become the norm.