【Record】Mr. Shu Zhan, Director of Tencent Culture & Tourism Research Institute, delivers a speech on the forum of New Normal of Tourism amid COVID-19

Moderator: It's my great pleasure to have a talk with you. We have about three simple segments in this section. The first one, can you tell me in one or two minutes about you and your organization and what you expect to be involved in this conference?

Shuzhan, Director of Tencent Culture & Tourism Research Institute

Shu Zhan: Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Shu Zhan. I come from Tencent Research Institute, Public Strategy Research Department of Tencent Group. In recent years, I have been engaged in the practice of digital travel industry, as well as industrial planning and related industrial research. Among them, I have done some important and typical ones. In one project, I lived in Yunnan for more than two years and cooperated with the government of Yunnan Province in the project of "Tour to Yunnan by Using a Mobile Phone ". During this project, my footsteps covered all the mountains and rivers in Yunnan. Moreover, we cooperated with the World Tourism City Federation and Helsinki City, and had cooperation in the digital cultural tour of Helsinki. These two cases are typical, leading, representative and researchable both at home and abroad. These are some of the things I've been happy with over the years.

Back to the topic, today is also a special day. First of all, I am from Wuhan. During the pandemic this year, I was stuck at home for almost half a year. Today I have a lot to say. I have two main purposes for attending this meeting. One is to meet my old friends in the industry. It may be the first time for me to meet them offline after the WTCF Helsinki Fragrant Hills Tourism Summit 2019. Secondly, Tencent has been committed to making data toolboxes and digital assistants. We would like to have a look and discuss together, in the new normal period after the pandemic, where will our tourism industry go? What kind of opportunities do we have? What are the pain points? What can Tencent do for you? What can it bring? Thank you very much!

The last guest is Dr. Shu from Tencent Tourism Industry Research Institute. We are all familiar with it in our daily understanding that your organization has done a lot of work for digital culture and tourism. What is striking about digital culture and tourism during the pandemic is that it is not completely online now. Now the online and offline activities are more integrated, or more closely integrated. Including the reservation of tickets, including a lot of smart tours. I remember that there is a special term "cloud tourism". From your professional perspective, is "cloud tourism" a temporary measure or a long-term trend? That's the first question.

My second question is, digitization is a trend, but in terms of digital services for tourism, where do we still need to improve? Or what is the development space for the future? Just these two questions. Thank you!

Shu Zhan: Thank you. Let me talk briefly about some of our own thoughts on these two issues. The first question is about the so-called "cloud tourism", which we prefer to consider as some phenomena and forms of business in the whole cultural and tourism industry in the process of digitization. When we look at the situation before the pandemic, after it, and after it entered a new normal, indeed, the pandemic has brought about great changes in our life, production and the culture and tourism industry. But we also found that it greatly accelerated some of the digitization processes in the whole industry. Not only cloud travel, but also cloud live broadcast, cloud exhibitions, and even the cloud Canton Fair.

We can also see that Tencent participated in the whole pandemic period, from the health code to the reservation code, to the issuance of cultural travel vouchers. The number is amazing. For example, Tencent's Health Code, which we know has been online for less than 100 days, has covered 1 billion users and has been used more than 120 billion times.

There's a lot of stuff on the cloud, and we found out that these technologies and some of these concepts were mature before the pandemic. There's been a lot of exploration, and a lot of cases, including technologies like AR and VR that we've talked about, but there was really not a single opportunity for it to go viral. During the pandemic, due to the limitation of time and space, people developed a way to communicate with each other, conduct business activities and experience tourism through the "cloud". In our opinion, such a form and digital habit, including what the moderator has mentioned just now, is not only a pure online thing, but also highlighted a very strong integration and instrumentalization with the offline world. We believe that this trend will last for a long time, and will not be gone like a gust of wind. However, it does not mean that we will replace offline tourism experience with the "cloud" approach. It will make the two better integrated and give birth to some new experiences and new models. This is our basic view and judgment.

Second, where else will change and possibilities come from? In fact, during the pandemic this year, we did a survey together with Director Song for the very first time. Frankly speaking, I was quite satisfied with the survey. The reason for our satisfaction is that, in addition to the very professional grasp of the Tourism Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in all aspects of the academic model, we have really applied big data in detail. Our findings can stand up to the test. In this survey, we can find that people have high expectations on the use of digital technology and how to travel easily and safely. The public also pays great attention to the transformation of our smart tourism scenes.

Moreover, people's expectations for leisure, health, and study tourism are very high, and this is a trend that we see.

In addition, from the perspective of the development of digital culture and tourism, we can see the top-level planning level of digital culture and tourism. At present, digital culture and tourism platforms are being built all over the country. However, there is still much room for improvement in the operation of such platforms and the cultivation of new forms of business, new species and even new consumption habits. We also hope that, with CYTS, JTB or Universal, including countries and cities where we have many destinations, we can jointly make more explorations in these fields. Thank you, moderator.

Moderator: Thank you. Exactly as what Dr. Shu said, digitalization is not just for an enterprise, not just for a product level, but also a very important concept for public services, especially for the building of destinations. Maybe I'm too strict as a scholar, so the time that I just gave you was extremely limited. At present, we have relatively enough time. In the final round, can each of you use three key words to summarize the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on us and the response of our industry?

Shu Zhan: I think no matter what the pandemic is like, it reminds us that the way and mode of tourism we used to be familiar with are gone forever. We are ushering in a new era, no matter whether we are willing or not. I also have three key words here in the end.

The first key word is the same as what the president of Universal Beijing Resort said, which is digitalization. We hope that digital tools can bring new opportunities and development to our tourism industry before, during and after the pandemic.

The second word is long-term value. Through this pandemic, our tourism industry thinks deep and figures out what is the real long-term value, just like Tencent has been thinking about how science and technology could build a better world. The real tourism must give everyone a better life. Through the pandemic I hope everyone would think more about the long-term value.

The third word is collaborative innovation. After the pandemic, more tourism organizations, governments, destinations, tourism companies or technology companies, should join hands, share the same values, and make collaborative innovation in this industry.

Moderator: OK, thank you all for contributing 13 keywords. Two of them are repetitive, or consensus. One is digitization and the other is innovation. I think we have a little bit of time, so let me just briefly summarize.

Just now, through the dialogue with the five guests, we can probably understand the following points.

First, the impact is unprecedented. I used this key word of Mr. Gao. This impact has never been seen before in the history of tourism and since the birth of modern tourism, so its impact is unprecedented.

Second, safety is the first and foremost requirement. We can talk about prosperity, recovery and market rebound. The basic premise is that the pandemic shall be effectively brought under control. On the premise of regular pandemic prevention and control, we shall take appropriate anti-pandemic measures before going to travel.

Third, everyone can feel that we are very optimistic. We firmly believe that the market will recover. But the recovery is step-by-step, and it might take some time. At the beginning of the outbreak, some people had predicted that it must be step-by-step. The recovery must start from the surrounding areas and from the domestic, bit by bit, at a small scale and with low density.

Fourth, the prosperity of our industry may require our long-term joint efforts. We need to pay attention to the security standards and norms mentioned above, and the gradual change of our market. For enterprises, they need to change the market they used to focus on. They originally only concentrate on overseas markets, but now they shall begin to keep an eye on the domestic market. Originally they may receive more individual customers, but now the package tour might also see a recovery. Technological innovation is also crucial and embodied in many aspects, such as public services, enterprises, and the experience of tourists.

Fifth, partnerships. The president of the Universal Beijing Resort mentioned this just now. Especially in the context of the pandemic prevention and control, we need to cooperate with more and more departments in all aspects of travel, and we will cooperate with our partners in terms of more and more problems.

Finally, strengthening crisis management is more important and necessary than ever for our industry.