Recently, during the Mid Autumn Festival National Day holiday, high-speed rail travel was very popular. Before the start of the Golden Week, "It's difficult to buy tickets" was repeatedly listed on the list of hot topics. On the first day of the holiday, the national railway sent 20098000 passengers, a record high. During the eight day holiday, the average daily number of passengers sent by the national railway was 16.862 million, about twice the number during the Spring Festival travel this year.
The high heat of high-speed rail travel reflects the subtle changes in people's traffic demand. "Traveling by high-speed rail" has become a vivid picture of life for many Chinese people. In recent years, China's railway industry has developed rapidly, especially the high-speed railway network has become increasingly perfect. More than 95% of cities with a population of 500000 in urban areas have been connected into a network, and the distance between urban agglomerations has been shortened. Most tourist destinations can be reached by high-speed railway smoothly.
Moreover, with the launch of high-speed rail monthly tickets, pass tickets and other new ticket products, the trend of "transit" and "subway" of high-speed rail across cities is becoming more and more obvious. This is also highly consistent with people's increasingly personalized, characteristic and niche travel needs and trends. The fast speed, convenient transfer and high punctuality rate make the high-speed railway an ideal travel tool. Especially within 1000 kilometers, the cost performance of high-speed railway is higher than that of aircraft.
The high-speed railway is also subtly changing the lifestyle of travel and boosting the consumption vitality of cultural tourism. The opening and popularization of high-speed railway has shortened the time distance between people and travel destinations, stimulated people's travel needs and interests, and driven tourism consumption. The popularity of short distance travel on weekends has something to do with the development of high-speed railway. How many "go as you go" tours have been realized. Many places have also launched unique tourism high-speed rail, such as the "Hangzhou Huangshan high-speed rail" connecting Hangzhou City and Huangshan City, and the "Chengdu Guizhou high-speed rail" across the three major tourism provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan. The driving effect of high-speed rail on tourism economy can be seen.
The opening of new high-speed railway lines and the dynamic development of high-speed railway network have quietly affected people's choice of travel destinations. In the past, people preferred destinations, but now, "high-speed rail N hour circle" has become a new choice. What's more, the continuous change of traffic conditions endows tourism resources in different spaces with different values and puts them in dynamic competition. For those tourism resources "raised in purdah but unknown to others", the arrival of high-speed railway has activated the quiet market, thus invigorating the tourism resources or bringing about development opportunities for local curve overtaking. For other places with better traffic foundation but less prominent tourism resources, high-speed rail may bring new worries about people coming and going in a hurry. In either case, it is a valuable opportunity to promote the transformation and upgrading of local tourism industry and even reshape regional economic development.
It can be predicted that high-speed rail travel will still be the growth highlight of tourism economy in the future. How to leverage the local cultural and tourism market with high-speed rail should be kept sharp and seize the opportunity. In particular, after years of development, the "four horizontal and four vertical" high-speed rail network has been fully completed, and the "eight horizontal and eight vertical" high-speed rail network has been densified. The generally elevated traffic conditions, to some extent, let the tourism resources of the same kind or space stand on the new starting line that has been leveled. In order to improve the attraction of tourism resources, the only way to do this is to use our brains and efforts in innovating tourism products, improving tourism services, enhancing brand image operations, and abandon fast food and homogenization. For higher level administrative divisions, it is also worth thinking about how to better develop global tourism, innovate the pass system, make the high-speed railway more skillfully connect local tourism resources, activate tourism consumption vitality, and enhance the radiation effect on regional economic development.
