Lvwei Culture and Tourism: How to Build a Nighttime Cultural Tourism Consumption Cluster
Lvwei Insights: 'A region's nighttime light brightness is directly proportional to its GDP.' Nighttime economic consumption has become a major engine of economic growth and a new axis of urban GDP. In late 2019, the General Office of the State Council issued the Opinions on Further Stimulating the Potential of Cultural and Tourism Consumption, which called for the vigorous development of the nighttime cultural tourism economy and explicitly set the goal of 'building over 200 national-level nighttime cultural tourism consumption clusters by 2022.' It is foreseeable that in an era when the nighttime cultural tourism consumer market is entering a fast-track development phase, such clusters will become hot development projects for local governments to integrate night tour resources, enrich nighttime consumption supply, and release the vitality of the cultural tourism economy.
So how do we build a nighttime cultural tourism consumption cluster? What are the development models and key points? Drawing on popular case studies of cultural tourism consumption clusters, Lvwei Culture and Tourism analyzes and summarizes five current mainstream development models and their key points for your reference.
01. What is a Nighttime Cultural Tourism Consumption Cluster?
Nighttime cultural tourism consumption refers to consumption activities that take place between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. the following day, driven by residents' nighttime leisure needs and tourists' overnight stays. It acts as a catalyst for the integration of a city's nighttime economy and its cultural tourism economy. With the rise of the post-80s and post-90s consumer power, demand for nighttime leisure, entertainment, and tourism is increasingly diverse, with cultural experience being the main component. Therefore, comprehensive clusters that gather urban cultural landscapes and diverse business formats represent the main development trend of the future nighttime economy.
A nighttime cultural tourism consumption cluster is a comprehensive industrial cluster that relies on a certain nighttime scenic environment, integrates distinctive cultural symbols, lifestyle atmospheres, and commercial formats, can blend into regional economic development, and has strong radiation and driving effects. As a clearly stated construction goal of the General Office of the State Council, the nighttime cultural tourism consumption cluster also points to a clear path for future integrated urban culture and tourism planning.
02. How to Build a Nighttime Cultural Tourism Consumption Cluster
I. Five Innovative Models for Nighttime Cultural Tourism Consumption Clusters
— Scenic Area Night Tour Model
The development of night tours in scenic areas is a core means to extend visitor stay time, promote culture-tourism integration, and expand tourist consumption space. Light shows, tourism performances, festivals, themed exhibitions, and special nighttime experiences are common ways to develop scenic area night tours, adding unique features to the attractions. At the same time, with night tour projects as the core draw, the transformation of 'transit visitors' into 'overnight visitors' and 'day trips' into 'multi-day trips' can drive revenue growth in on-site and nearby dining, accommodation, shopping, entertainment, and other businesses, forming a regional nighttime cultural tourism economic development cluster and boosting the consumption upgrade of the destination's entire industrial chain.
Case: Qingming Shanghe Yuan Night Tour Project
As a national 5A-level scenic area and a performance base for China's intangible cultural heritage, Qingming Shanghe Yuan is a core carrier of Kaifeng's cultural tourism industry. Since 2008, the large-scale live water show Da Song · Dongjing Meng Hua has been performed, recreating scenes from the painting Along the River During the Qingming Festival and the history of the Northern Song Dynasty using classic Song poetry and high-tech stagecraft, becoming a major source of revenue beyond entrance tickets. In 2017, Qingming Shanghe Yuan launched the 'Night Tour of Qingyuan' experience project and increased evening performances of Da Song · Dongjing Meng Hua. In 2018, total visitor numbers reached 3.3 million, a 12% increase over 2017, with night tour visitor growth at 40%, while the proportion of ticket revenue in total income fell by 5% year-on-year. The development of the multi-format nighttime economy has helped the scenic area gradually reduce its dependence on a single ticket-income model.
1. Leveraging Performance Popularity to Expand Night Tour Products
After Da Song · Dongjing Meng Hua achieved strong market recognition, Qingming Shanghe Yuan expanded its night tour area and comprehensively upgraded its night tour products under the themes of 'good to see, good to eat, good to play; old Kaifeng, old brands, old flavors.' Changing night lighting, the 'Qingyuan Night Market,' a light and shadow show based on Along the River During the Qingming Festival, a water park, and other nighttime experience projects recreate the street life of the Northern Song Dynasty and the image of an 'all-night city' with imperial gardens, complementing daytime sightseeing in content and revenue.
2. Enriching Peripheral Business Formats to Create a New Engine for the Nighttime Cultural Tourism Economy
Night tours have underpinned Qingming Shanghe Yuan's high revenue growth in recent years. Building on this, Kaifeng City has enriched nighttime commercial formats around the scenic area, developing cultural-tourism-commercial complex projects such as Qishengjiao Folk Culture Street, Bianliang Xiao Song Cheng, Shanghe City Snack Street, Dongjing Menghua Half-Mu Garden, Zhu Jixiang Commercial Street, the Kaifeng Cultural and Creative Center, and the 960 Intangible Cultural Heritage Industrial Park. These have created more consumption scenarios for overnight visitors, and the clustering of businesses has become a new engine for the night-tour economy. Meanwhile, the accommodation sector, represented by themed boutique hotels and unique B&Bs, has also seen rapid growth in Kaifeng.
— Nighttime Cultural Tourism Consumption District Model
A nighttime cultural tourism consumption district is a development model that uses a leisure commercial street as its spatial carrier, with regional characteristic culture and living atmosphere as the core draw, and is oriented to simultaneously meet the diverse nighttime consumption needs of both tourists and local residents. It gathers various consumer formats such as nightscape sightseeing, shopping, dining, entertainment, cultural creativity, film and television, and performances, relying on the clustering of crowds and the transference of consumption to form an integrated cultural-commerce-tourism development model, as shown in the figure below.
Figure: Development Model of a Nighttime Cultural Tourism Consumption Commercial Street
Nighttime cultural tourism commercial streets are usually located in city center areas with a certain commercial development base, can leverage large-scale commercial complexes, and form a linkage and radiating effect with core scenic spots. The core logic of their development is to break through the traditional concepts of 'night markets' and 'nighttime retail,' extend the consumption chain of the regional cultural tourism industry in terms of time and scene, shape a city's nighttime commerce with new 'excitement points' and unique brands, and create a consumption aggregation structure that combines local characteristics with international trends, integrates cultural tourism experiences with urban nighttime leisure life, and features multiple formats and high popularity.
Case: Xi’an Datang Everbright City Pedestrian Street
Datang Everbright City is a classic case of commercial street renovation in China and one of the most popular night tour products. Its success is inseparable from the creation of a 'night tour mode.'
The Datang Everbright City district project is located in the western part of Xi'an’s Qujiang New District, stretching 2,100 meters north to south and 500 meters east to west, running through six Tang-style districts and four major cultural buildings: Xi’an Concert Hall, Shaanxi Grand Theatre, Xi'an Art Museum, and Qujiang Film City. Before 2018, like similar faux-ancient commercial streets, it was an undistinctive pedestrian area. At the end of 2018, through joint investment by Qujiang Culture Group, Zheshang Chanrong Holdings, Taiping Poly, Poly Property, and related financial institutions, the Datang Everbright City pedestrian street completed its full upgrading to a pedestrian-only area. In April 2019, it was named one of the first 11 high-quality pedestrian streets nationwide by the Ministry of Commerce. It has now become a new calling card for Xi’an's cultural tourism that integrates culture, commerce, technology, and tourism, blending traditional culture with creative elements, and serves as the city living room for the starting point of the Silk Road.
'Night tour culture' and 'Tang culture' are the main threads running through Datang Everbright City’s business model. At night, sound, light, electricity, and other technological means are used to render the streetscape, creating an immersive night tour route where light and shadow restore the ancient capital Chang’an and allow visitors to feel the grandeur of the Tang Dynasty firsthand. In 2019, Datang Everbright City received 120 million visitors, ranking first in visitor volume among national 5A scenic areas, with an average daily visitor count of 300,000. During the 2020 National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival 'double holiday,' it hosted 2,647,300 visitors, a new record. Datang Everbright City has become a modern 'Tang Dynasty wonderland' and a must-visit night attraction on a trip to Xi'an.
1. Relying on Unique Nightscapes to Build Diverse Consumption Formats
Datang Everbright City pedestrian street uses Tang culture as its main theme, skillfully combining Tang dynasty historical elements, Xi'an-style lifestyle elements, and modern art elements through artistic landmarks, illuminated scenery, immersive visual experiences, and street performances. This forms a unique nighttime landscape, upon which it introduces exquisite formats such as food, hotels, department stores, boutique retail, cultural creative experiences, and trendy bookstores. Combined with the two large commercial complexes Yintai Mall and Joy City, it forms a diverse consumption cluster, turning the super-high popularity of a hot scenic area into the commercial energy that drives economic development. While serving as Xi’an's cultural display window, it has also become a new urban nighttime leisure space that meets the consumption needs of both local residents and tourists.
2. Featuring Night Tour Activities and Refining Basic Nighttime Formats
Datang Everbright City’s night tour activities are rich. In addition to the two regular on-site live performances Encore: The Great Wild Goose Pagoda and Encore: Chang’an, and the pedestrian street's Wild Goose Pagoda Water Dance Light Show and Float Parade, there are also street art, performance art, music shows, folk song performances, percussion shows, Western instruments, and other experiential formats spaced every few dozen meters. During the 2019 Spring Festival, the pedestrian street seized upon the cultural IP 'Xi’an Year · The Most Chinese,' blending light shows, themed festive lanterns, float parades, time-honored brand food containers, and other cultural elements highlighting a lively Chinese New Year and Xi'an's characteristics into a scene of 'the flourishing Tang dynasty.' Appearances and performances by figures such as the Tang poet Li Bai, the imperial concubine 'painting beauty,' and the costumed tumbler enhanced the interactive experience of the night tour district. In just the seven days of the 2019 Spring Festival holiday, the pedestrian street welcomed 4.1234 million visitors from around the world, becoming an 'internet-famous district' with over 700 million Weibo views and 400 million Douyin plays, creating a model for the deep integration of nighttime culture, commerce, and tourism.
3. Skillfully Using 'Traffic' and Targeting Young People’s Needs
'Attracting traffic' is the premise for building night tour formats, equivalent to its lifeblood. Datang Everbright City fully explored the cultural connotations of the Tang dynasty, integrated them into the overall packaging and creation of the night scene, supplemented by vivid interactive experiences, thus forming its own unique cultural IP and maximizing the effect of 'traffic attraction.'
In cleverly attracting younger clientele, Datang Everbright City relies on high-tech means to lay out landscape features and internet-famous photo spots. In particular, interactive experience installations realized through sound, light, electricity, and other high-tech methods are extremely popular with young people. Almost every few dozen meters there is an interactive feature, which quickly gathers crowds.
When mentioning Datang Everbright City, the first thing that comes to mind is the 'Tumbler Lady' who went viral online, with 2.3 billion clicks on Douyin. In terms of traffic marketing, Datang Everbright City expresses traditional culture in a modern way, creating explosive small IPs through new media dissemination. For instance, the 'Tumbler Lady' is a street performance art act based on two tumbler figures designed after Xi'an's city mascots 'Tang Bao' and 'Tang Niu.' Also, suspended performances like 'Striving on the Road' and 'Dunhuang Murals' are successful breakthroughs in content innovation for Datang Everbright City. Through traffic marketing on short video and social networking platforms, they have created a unique brand image that distinguishes it from other commercial streets.
The Tumbler Lady performing. Photographer: Huo Yan
— 'Cultural Tourism' Development Model for Nighttime Transportation
The tourism-oriented development of transport facilities (roads, bridges, lanes, pathways, etc.) is an effective means to integrate spatial cultural tourism resources across an entire region and promote linkages between various scenic spots. In the process of building nighttime cultural tourism consumption clusters, the transformation of transport facilities from 'functional' to 'product' is also an important development model for connecting nighttime cultural venues, tourism elements, and consumption formats. Using the 'lines' of transport facilities to link the 'points' of late-night operations, a diversified nightlife economic development 'circle' is created, as shown in the figure below.
Figure: Consumer Cluster Development Led by Nighttime Transportation Cultural Tourism
In this development model, lighting, technology, and creativity are combined to illuminate and enhance the transport facility itself at night, forming the core attraction of a nighttime scenic route. At the same time, by deeply exploring regional characteristic culture, through themed activities, the creation of distinctive transport ride experiences, and the improvement of basic service functions, the scattered tourism resources and nighttime business formats along and around the route are systematically connected and integrated, forming a holistic, linear nighttime cultural tourism economic development structure with a clear theme, diverse experiences, and seamless services.
Case: Glow-in-the-Dark Bicycle Path in North Brabant, Netherlands
The glow-in-the-dark bicycle path in the southern Netherlands province of North Brabant is a characteristic cycling route created by Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde in collaboration with a construction materials company, inspired by Van Gogh's famous painting The Starry Night. It uses solar-powered stones as landscape materials and a lighting system, and stretches 335 kilometers. Opened to the public in November 2014, it is a model of night tour development that blends technology and humanistic emotional experience while linking regional cultural resources.
1. Unique Road Nightscape Design Creates a Core Attraction
Inspired by Van Gogh’s masterpiece The Starry Night, the road surface design uses cobblestones coated with a special paint that absorbs solar energy and glows in the dark or under cloudy conditions, producing beautiful swirling patterns that highly restore the scene from the painting. Using technology to pay homage to Van Gogh echoes the path’s slogan, 'Here, history meets the future.' The combination of culture, art, and technology in the nighttime cycling experience draws many local residents and tourists.
2. Using a Famous Figure’s Story to Link Regional Cultural Tourism Resources
The glow-in-the-dark bicycle path passes through Zundert, Van Gogh’s birthplace; Tilburg, where he took his first painting lessons; Etten, where he painted his first model; and Nuenen, where he created The Potato Eaters. It strings together Van Gogh’s life trajectory in North Brabant. The five scattered but individually distinctive Van Gogh-themed museums along the route are thus connected into a themed tour line, gradually breaking free from the limitations of single museum exhibitions. Exploring Van Gogh’s formative years, the inspiration for his paintings, and his artistic career has become a regional draw for tourists. Derivative service formats such as painting classes, shopping centers, cinemas, theaters, and specialty dining have also clustered as a result of night tour development.
— Nighttime Cultural Tourism Landscape Corridor Development Model
The nighttime cultural tourism landscape corridor development model uses urban water systems, greenways, parks, and other municipal infrastructure as its spatial carriers. By implanting elements such as illuminated scenery, culture and arts, and immersive technology, a nighttime cultural tourism sightseeing corridor is formed. Based on this, urban landmark attractions, cultural venues, and commercial clusters along the route are linked, combined with nearby specialty dining, cultural markets, performance venues, and other formats, to create a nighttime economic cluster that fuses urban scenery with diverse consumption scenes, as shown in the figure below.
Figure: Development Logic of a Nighttime Cultural Tourism Landscape Corridor
A nighttime cultural tourism consumption landscape corridor typically relies on municipal infrastructure that serves urban ecological enhancement functions and is located in areas where urban landmark landscape buildings are concentrated. Through the application of creative themes and nighttime landscaping technologies, it forms a consumption cluster characterized by urban humanistic sentiment and modern scenery.
Case: Chengdu 'Night Tour of Jinjiang' Project
Night Tour of Jinjiang. Photo source: Chengdu Culture and Tourism Group
'Night Tour of Jinjiang' is a new calling card for Chengdu leisure tourism created by the Chengdu Culture and Tourism Group. Located along the 240-kilometer Jinjiang Greenway built beside the Jinjiang River, it underwent waterway testing during the 2019 Spring Festival and began operations in April of that year. The project uses the 'Jinjiang Story Scroll' as its main thread, taking the section where the 'Fuhe' and 'Nanhe' rivers encircle the city center as its carrier to form a 4.4-kilometer dynamic experience corridor of Chengdu's urban scenery. It links four major areas—Urban Leisure, Dongmen Market, Downtown Meditation, and Jinguanyi Ancient Post Station—and along the route creates six themed scenes: 'Night Market, Night Food, Night Exhibition, Night Show, Night Festival, and Night Stay.' It offers both local residents and tourists a night-tour experience cluster that is both authentic Old Chengdu and cosmopolitan.
1. Combining Culture and Technology to Build a Nighttime Cultural Tourism IP
The 'Night Tour of Jinjiang' project takes well-known poetic scenes from history as its prototypes, from Du Fu’s 'My door harbors boats sailing as far as Wu,' to Lu You’s 'By the brocade river, the world is rare.' By combining a black-awning boat night-tour project with holographic projections, light shows, fireworks displays, and melodious ancient music on both banks, it re-creates Chengdu's historical flourishing charm, evoking the sensation of 'traveling within a painting.' Relying on immersive illuminated landscapes, it has built a nighttime cultural tourism IP for Chengdu.
2. Connecting Cultural, Commercial, and Tourism Resources Along the Route to Form a Nighttime Economic Ecosystem
The 'Night Tour of Jinjiang' project generates more than just simple boat ticket revenue; it also utilizes the river surface and docking points to link numerous commercial resources such as Taikoo Li, the 339 TV Tower, Lan Kwai Fong, and Jiuyanqiao Bridge. Newly added riverside consumption venues such as specialty theaters, traditional markets, art districts, museums, and teahouses are incorporated into the tour system, enabling originally isolated nighttime consumption points to form a clustered and large-scale development structure, further releasing Chengdu's nighttime economic vitality.
— Nighttime Cultural Tourism Complex Development Model
The nighttime cultural tourism complex development model is a comprehensive development approach based on a certain cultural tourism development background and land foundation, oriented toward nighttime cultural experiences and leisure consumption. Nighttime cultural tourism complexes usually take cultural industrial parks, large scenic areas and their peripheries, hotel clusters, resorts, or large commercial complexes as their core support. By creating nighttime landscapes and diverse consumer experience projects, they form interactive cultural tourism cores. Drawing on the gathering of overnight crowds and the transference and extension of consumption, they drive the development of regional resort residential communities, supporting service industries, and extended cultural tourism industries, thus forming a nighttime economic cluster development structure with higher service quality and comprehensive leisure functions, as shown in the figure below.
Figure: Nighttime Cultural Tourism Consumption Complex Development Model
Case: Tangshan South Lake Nighttime Cultural Tourism Complex
Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Yang Shiyao
In 2018, Tangshan Culture and Tourism Group made South Lake Scenic Area its spatial base, with key projects including the South Lake Light Show, the China Tangshan Shadow Puppet Theme Park, the Designer’s Garden ‘Love Lane,’ and the Football-Themed Hotel, supplemented by multiple high-quality cultural activities, creating a nighttime cultural tourism consumption complex with rich content and numerous highlights.
1. Taking the Light Show as the Core to Form a Nighttime Attraction Foundation
The South Lake Light Show covers six key areas: Danfeng Chaoyang Square, the Domestic Garden, the International Garden, Longshan Hill, Yunfeng Island, and Love Lane. It uses over 2 million new energy point light sources and features four seasonal display forms with three activation modes—energy-saving, daily, and festival—to create a dazzling interplay of light and shadow that presents Tangshan’s thousand-year heritage, century-old civilization, and urban transformation, forming the core attraction for gathering overnight visitors.
2. Laying Out Multiple Formats to Build a Full Nighttime Consumption Industry Chain
Based on the illumination effects of the light show, Tangshan Culture and Tourism Group fully utilized the service area, Domestic Garden, International Garden, and other venues to plan consumer formats covering key tourism elements, including themed specialty dining, themed hotels, cultural display streets, smart sports stations, a shadow puppet theater, and the Tangshan Gift flagship store. During the 2018 National Day holiday, South Lake Scenic Area saw 700,000 visitors within four days, 900,000 within five, 1.06 million within six, and a total of nearly 1.2 million over seven days, a year-on-year increase of 780%, with excellent market response. In 2019, the live performance That Splendid Time, based on the natural and cultural landscape of Tangshan’s South Lake Yunfeng Island, was presented, using modern digital multimedia technology and lighting to interpret the spiritual connotations of Tangshan’s century-old cultural heritage. Moreover, with the successive holding of quality cultural events such as eco-runs, concerts, a Guinness World Record marriage proposal challenge, and the 'Exploring Tangshan Flavors' food festival, the South Lake area has gradually become a new calling card for Tangshan’s nighttime economy, where dazzling light and profound cultural experiences converge.
II. Key Development Points for Nighttime Cultural Tourism Consumption Clusters
(1) Grasp 'Inherent Conditions' and Avoid Blind Development
Although building nighttime cultural tourism consumption clusters is an important means to tap the potential of 'year-round, all-time tourism,' their development must be premised on a certain daytime tourism or commercial foundation, such as mature scenic areas, commercial circles, first-tier city centers, or ancient towns with existing visitor flows. The chosen site must have complete infrastructure such as ample parking, full WiFi coverage, and tourist toilets, along with a supporting service system. If the project location is still in the early stages of cultural tourism development, with problems such as inconvenient transportation, limited available land, low consumption capacity in the city and surrounding areas, scarce resources, or service facilities that cannot accommodate an incremental population and tourists, priority should be given to resolving constraints on the daytime cultural tourism economy. Rigid application and blind development of night tour projects leading to wasted capital and resources must be avoided.
(2) 'Illumination' Must Have Culture as Its Soul and Create Distinctive Themes
Building nighttime cultural tourism consumption clusters should take 'regional characteristics + cultural elements' as the direction, design nighttime consumption scenarios and create themes, develop consumer projects with unique IP value and memorable experiences, and build consumption brands that are highly recognizable, strongly resonant, and well-reputed.
At a time when light shows and tourism performances are increasingly becoming 'standard features' for scenic areas and urban night tours, and the notion that 'light brings gold' is widely accepted by governments at all levels, to avoid homogeneity in nighttime cultural tourism projects and create a core attraction that draws crowds, one must start from the regional cultural connotations, including the city's humanistic history, modern fashion culture, and characteristic lifestyles. By refining, reconstructing, and illuminating regional cultural stories and local customs through light and shadow, performances, and immersive experiences, a distinctive theme and cultural IP that match the city's temperament should be built, thereby forming unique selling points and differentiating traits for nighttime cultural tourism projects. At the same time, attention should be paid to cultural and tourism integration, creating more experiential nighttime cultural scenes and connotative nighttime tourist destinations. Moreover, scenic areas can add digital arts and technology projects such as AI, VR, AR, virtual reality, and cloud tourism, as well as leisure and entertainment interactive experiences.
Meanwhile, adapting to changes in consumer psychology and market demand, formats like night performances, night exhibitions, night reading, night entertainment, night shows, night tours, night dining, night shopping, and night stays should be innovatively developed. Regularly operated, quality, and characteristic nighttime cultural tourism consumption experience products should be launched, such as immersive performances, intangible heritage interactive projects, cultural creative products, 3D light shows, and street art performances, to extend the cultural tourism consumption chain.
(3) Connect Landmarks of Scenic Areas and Cities to Form Characteristic Tour Routes
From successful cases of nighttime cultural tourism consumption clusters, it can be seen that linking regional iconic landscapes and urban cultural venues and applying unified thematic creation and nightscape design is a common way to highlight the city’s character and promote the integrated nighttime development of scenic spots and the city. One or several themed tour route systems should be planned according to site conditions and cultural endowments. By combining multiple landmark sightseeing and night tour experience products, originally independent scenic spots and cultural venues are linked together to jointly shape the brand influence of the city’s nighttime cultural tourism.
(4) Create Multi-Dimensional Consumption Scenarios and Achieve an Integrated Cultural, Tourism, and Commercial Development Structure
The building of nighttime cultural tourism consumption clusters should go beyond traditional concepts of nighttime sightseeing, cultural exhibitions, and retail. Starting from meeting the diverse leisure consumption needs of both residents and tourists, it should innovate and combine industry-related elements such as dining, accommodation, transportation, sightseeing, shopping, and entertainment into new formats, creating diverse consumption scenarios and a one-stop service structure to upgrade the quality of the night tour experience. The popularity and creative cluster brought by the cultural tourism industry should also drive the entry of commercial enterprises and large-scale economic development, ultimately forming an integrated cultural, tourism, and commercial development structure.
