On the Marketing Strategies of Heritage in Chongzuo City

朱瑞

【Abstract】Chongzuo city is in the southwest border of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.After ten years development，its tourism industry has been taking shape.However，the tourism market of Chongzuo still facessome problemslike being limited in long-distance domestic marketand immigration market.With considering Chongzuos geographical advantages as well as its abundant natural and cultural resources，this paperwill mainly focus on analyzing the tourism marketing strategies of Chongzuo and give certain feasible modes to enhance the development of heritage tourism in Chongzuo.

【Key words】heritage tourism； marketing strategies

Chongzuo city belongs to the southwest part of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.It is surrounded by tremendous mountains，hills as well as the special terrain that is the karst landforms.Chongzuo turns in the direction of Southeast Asia，and is adjacent to Vietnam and has five major counties，Pingxiang，Daxin，Ningming Longzhou and Jiangzhou.It is at the southern part of Tropic of Cancer and belongs to the subtropics monsoon climate region with moderate climate，abundant rainfall，and fertile land.In particular，Chongzuo city is a multi-ethnic enclaves inhabited by Zhuang，Han，Yao，Miao，Manchu and Tujia peoples，and Zhuang people are the main residents of Chongzuo.Therefore，in the light of Chongzuos advantageous geography，favorable climate and Zhuang ethnic group，Chongzuo encompasses luxuriant natural resources，gorgeous landscapes，and unique cultures of Zhuang people.Ma Xinhua （2001）argued that considering its natural and cultural advantages，Chongzuo city has gradually shaped its tourism marketing strategies.

First and foremost，Chongzuo city has designed a series of theme-oriented tour routes corresponding scattered spots to meet diverse needs of different tourist groups.In the first place，Chongzuo has highlighted the development ofRed Tourism and they have set up several high-profile tour routes，like the “Red Culture Tour” that is one of the distinctive and special red tourism routes.In terms of the historical reasons，the Longzhou County belonging to Chongzuo is the hometown of the Red Army and there stillremain the sites of Red Army and Longzhou Memorial Monument Exhibition as the patriotic education places.Therefore，the local government strongly advocates establishing the Red Tourism as the shinning point in the tourism industry of Chongzuo.At the same time，Chongzuo also attaches great importance to the Green Tourism because there exist a great many ecological and natural resources，such as rare animals and plants，the karst landforms，the Pingxiang Friendship Gate，the Big Waterfalls which are the largest natural waterfalls in Southeast Asia and the second largest Chinese-Vietnam transnational waterfalls in the world.According to these natural landscapes，the local government has also designed a series of typical tourist routes like the “Green Travel Landscapes”.Apart from the Red and Green Tourism，Chongzuo carries out to boost the cultural tourism of Zhuang ethnic groups as well，for Zhuang culture is the root culture of its ancestors.The core product of Zhuang cultural tourism tour is the majesticHuashan Mural Paintings which were painted on the perpendicular ridges in the Warring States Period.Meanwhile，the Lyra folk music also stands for Zhuang culture and presents their characteristics of hospitality.Hence Chongzuo possesses three major selling points，the Red，Green and Zhuang cultural tourism patterns attracting different tourists.

In addition，in order to absorb more tourists，Chongzuo city implements new product development strategy.It is widely acknowledged that the stage play “Impression of Liu Sanjie”is a typical product of Guangxi tourism industry.Accordingly，Chongzuo city also attempts to create a series of special plays combining with the Zhuang distinctive cultures and the mural paintings，big waterfalls，and beautiful natural landscapes are set as the playsbackground.Xie Ting （2009）held the view that it is apparent to realize that thestatic display mode nowadays has been difficult to attract tourists，so paying more attention to digging out more novelty and experiential tourism products is a good method to raise the competitiveness of sustainable tourism development in Chongzuo.On the whole，Chongzuo has successfully transformed the static tourist attractions into dynamic ones.

Although the Chongzuo city has positioned three specialty tourism products，but there still exist several problems in terms of the tourism marketing strategies in Chongzuo.

As for the tourism market，Chongzuo city should highly exploit the inbound tourism market to attract more overseas tourists.Wei Li in 2014 statedthat the overseas tourists are mainly from Chinese Hong Kong and Macao，accounting for about 86.24%.It is obvious that the number of the foreign tourists makes up for a little proportion，and these foreign tourists are mainly from the ASEAN countries and the US，taking up for only 11.2% and 1.28% respectively.Hence under such circumstance，it is indispensable to attach great importance to developing the inbound tourism market especially for those foreign tourists.Furthermore，tourists visit Chongzuo city for approximately 1.49 days per capita，which indicates that the tourism industrial chain in Chongzuo is not long enough and still lack of attractiveness.Therefore，the image of the tourism products should be further built.

As to the image building，the local Tourist Administration should continuouslystrengthen the product portfolio marketing to achieve the new leap.The“red”（Red Tour）and“green”（natural landscape），“ancient”（historical and cultural counties），“vulgar”（Zhuang folk customs）and every other combination of tourism resources should be combined together to develop the modern mode of“Color of cultural tourism”.In particular，it is fairly significant to further dig out deep cultural connotation of red tourism product to meet the needs of tourists in the high education level.First，it is of great importance to virtually present the historical appearances and objectively reflect historical facts to maintain thetourist attractionsauthenticity.Second，Chongzuo can learn from advanced foreign war monuments and historical relics exhibition technology，use of sound，light，and other forms of rich scientific and technological means to make the exhibition more attractive and appealing.The third is thatsome experts can be invitedto collect，sortand save historical documents，which enables the red spots tobe a sort of information and research center.Only in this way can the tourist attractions be added more flavor and interest.In total，combiningtourist spots withcultural connotations is a feasible strategy to improve its tourism image and promotetourismdevelopment in Chongzuo.

Finally，the place and promotion strategy of Chongzuo tourism should also be highly improved.Although Chongzuo city annually apply the Chinese-ASEAN Exhibition as its publicity platform，the network channel of promotion is neglected.Thus，two promotion modes connecting to the Internet is proposed in the following.Firstly，it is of great necessity to implement the O2O marketing model to highly promote the tourism development of Chongzuo.More specifically，on account of increasing popularity of surfing the Internet，designing an online website is rather efficient to publicize the specialties of Chongzuos tourism industry.The other promotion strategy is to apply the new media such as the WeChat，QQ，and television to attract more tourists visiting Chongzuo.Currently，people are closely dependent on the Internet and almost everyone uses these social networks in every single day.Hence with the Internet，the way of publicity can be more handy and efficiency.

In a nutshell，Chongzuo city embodies its own advantageous natural and cultural resources and has set up their own tourism products brand and design some typical tour routes such as the Red”，“Green” and “Zhuang” cultural tourism.However，part of these tourist activities is still like whirlwind tours instead of authentic experiences.Therefore，in order to make Chongzuos tourist attractions more appealing and genuine，it is indispensable to enlarge the inbound tourism market，strengthen the tourism image，and employ modern promotion strategies.

References：

[1]Wei，L.（2014）.Toruism marketing research of Chongzuo.Special Zone Economy.3（11），166-168.

[2]麻新華.崇左市旅游產品深度開發研究[J].中國市場，2011（2）.

[3]謝婷.邊境旅游目的地的國內游客特征及感知研究—以廣西壯族自治區崇左市為例[J].資源與產業，2009，11（6）：139-142.