How did Wuzhen become a miracle in the development of tourism marketing in China’s ancient towns?

From an undeveloped ancient town in 1999 to a decaying ancient town, it became a famous tourist town at home and abroad in the early 21st century, and was hailed as the "Wuzhen Model" by the United Nations expert inspection team. Wuzhen has created a miracle of Chinese tourism in a few years.

The model experience of Wuzhen development is of typical significance. Its achievements in burying pipelines underground, dredging rivers, repairing old buildings, and controlling excessive commercialization have always been the first or first in the protection and development of ancient towns in the country. An example of successful operation. Wuzhen adheres to the "protection and reuse of historical heritage" during development, and has implemented "three major projects" including heritage protection projects, cultural protection projects, and environmental protection projects, allowing Wuzhen to fully reproduce the style of the ancient water town of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This forms a leisure and sightseeing area integrating food, accommodation, transportation, travel, shopping and entertainment.

In addition, Wuzhen has made creative breakthroughs in continuously improving and enriching the cultural connotation of the scenic spot brand. In addition to showing the world Wuzhen’s unique residential water pavilions, old house deep alleys, Chuanquan shadow puppets and folk workshops, it also deeply The traditional folk culture has been excavated layer by layer, and many little-known folk festival customs, birthday customs, etiquette customs, wedding customs, clothing customs, etc. and the colorful "silkworm culture" have been pushed to the forefront of tourism, making the "Old Tongbao hometown style" written by Mao Dun "Get out of the ancient town that has been dusty for thousands of years. Wuzhen also held the "Fifth Mao Dun Literature Award Ceremony" and held the "Wuzhen Fragrance Market" with rich folk customs for two consecutive years, which attracted great attention from the media and tourists.

From 2004 to 2005, when the surrounding ancient towns made a big fuss about increasing ticket prices, Wuzhen put more energy into cultivating the tourist market, so it came from behind and successfully surpassed Zhouzhuang.

Wuzhen has increased its investment in marketing communications, hiring film and television star Liu Ruoying as its image spokesperson, and using "the same ancient town, different Wuzhen" as its appeal to differentiate itself from its competitors in communications. , achieved breakthrough success.

Noshi Li also believes that Wuzhen’s success mainly lies in two points: First, in compliance with the tourism development trend, while other ancient towns focus on the development of “ticket economy”, Wuzhen is based on the development of “regional economy” Target, and carry out intensive cultivation of tourist source markets to seize the opportunity of tourism development.

The second is to use the opportunity to break through in communication. In the form of inviting popular celebrities to be endorsements, the popularity of popular celebrities has greatly increased Wuzhen's attention.