Haikou, the capital city of China’s southern island province of Hainan, delivered a “high-scoring report card” during this year’s May Day Holiday (from May 1 to 5, 2025), welcoming just under 1.1 million tourists with total tourism related consumption hitting approximately USD 202.3 million. The city is actively working to attract more tourists by offering a variety of cultural events and tourism products, including holiday concerts, bonfire galas, and duty-free promotion.

Innovation upgrades tourism from “sightseeing” to “immersive participation”

Judging from activity listings and consumer feedback, Haikou’s diverse selection of tourism and culture offerings during the holidays showed a significant increase in “scenario-based” activities. Newly popular formats, such as lawn concerts, coastal light shows, and e-sports, have broken past the old “ticket economy” model found in traditional scenic spots, and shifted tourism consumption from “passive sightseeing” to “immersive participation”. 

Powered by Haikou’s accurate grasp of consumption upgrading trends, this transformation can be described as tourists no longer being satisfied with whirlwind trips to multiple locations, but instead preferring activities that “speak to them”. An exemplar of this sort of cultural and tourism product, local original music festival brand Kuaxia Haikou’s summer lawn concert attracted 130,000 visitors, and 2.5 million online attendees during this year’s May Golden Week (from May 1 to 5, 2025). At the same time, ancillary activities, including markets, camping, and water fights, helped drive secondary consumption to surrounding catering and retail outlets.

An increase over the past few years in people seeking out cultural experiences such as museum visits and demonstrations of intangible cultural heritage skills have naturally helped push the creative transformation of cultural resources in the tourism market. For example, the light and shadow show in Haikou’s historic downtown uses technological means to push the contemporary aesthetic value of century-old buildings. In this way, the limitations of the “static display” of traditional culture are broken and cultural IP is brought to life for younger generations.

Visitors take part in ancillary events related to the concerts. (Source: the Bureau of Tourism, Culture, Radio, Television and Sports of Haikou City)

“Concert economy” increases tourism income

According to data provided by the Bureau of Tourism, Culture, Radio, Television and Sports of Haikou City, at a respective 27% and 57%, the year-on-year increase in both tourists and tourism money are huge. What is fueling the increased consumption numbers? The answer is “concerts”.

On May 3 and again on May 4, the two Teens in Time concerts attracted a total of 115,400 almost entirely out-of-province visitors, with a total expenditure of CNY 655 million (approximately USD 90.63 million).

With just under 11% of the total number of tourists during the May Day holiday coming for the concert and only 5% of the audience and participants coming from Hainan, this one event led to nearly 45% of the holiday’s tourism income. At the same time, average occupancy rate of tourist accommodation units in Haikou on those two nights was up almost 17 points year-on-year for a stunning 81%.

Accurately capturing market trends and providing tourists with a matrix of special services such as “hot spots near the concert” and special “concert routes”, Haikou held a number of ancillary events for attendees, many of which were free or reduced price to people with concert tickets. The duty-free business also took advantage of this opportunity to launch special discounts and market activities that help drive the extension of the “performance + consumption” chain.

Visitors shop at a duty-free store. (Source: the Bureau of Tourism, Culture, Radio, Television and Sports of Haikou City)