According to data, during this year’s Spring Festival, “Tianmu Village” in Lin’an attracted 960,000 visitors to experience the festive atmosphere. Faced with such massive traffic, the challenge lies in converting this flow into sustained interest and turning first-time visitors” into “returning ones, which is “a compulsory course” for rural tourism’s sustainable growth.

In recent years, rural tourism has seen rapidly developed, offering diverse leisure options and driving rural revitalization. However, some villages witness high footfall without substantial economic benefits. Many visitors merely pass through without consumption, and few are willing to return. Therefore, enhancing the allure of rural tourism and transforming transient traffic into a driving force for industry and economic development are crucial tasks.

Rural tourism must possess its own unique charm to attract “first-time visitors”. It should seek the secrets of footfall from the phenomenon-level hotspots of Zibo and “Erbin”, as well as the “competition” in cultural and tourism sectors across various regions. It needs to identify the unique features of local rural tourism resources, innovate promotional methods, hype up the excitement, and transform waiting for visitors into actively attracting and snatching visitors to achieve a higher level of popularity. What’s more, it must create touching points to win “returning visitors.” Traditional attractions such as “staying in farmhouse inns, eating home-cooked meals, and enjoying rural scenery” are no longer sufficient to meet the needs of tourists. By embracing cross-disciplinary collaboration and integration, rural tourism should accommodate more emerging business models, present a growing number of possibilities, continuously offer fresh experiences to tourists, and demonstrate abundant “affection” through enthusiastic service, making visitors reluctant to leave and eager to return.

In the era of “Internet plus Tourism,” it’s easy to become a short-lived trend, but difficult to maintain long-term popularity. Rural tourism needs to compete in innovation in its products, excel in service experience, and build enduring brands to seize the opportunity and withstand the test of time, thereby achieving sustainable development.