1. Introduction
Short video is a kind of Internet communication method with video as content, which can make people receive information more effectively in fragmented time, catering to the needs of people in the fast-paced life habits of today. According to statistics, as one of the most dominant short-video social software, as of 31 August 2022, the user scale of Douyin has reached 800 million, with up to 700 million daily active users. It can be seen that people's lives have become inseparable from the company of Douyin, and Douyin is gradually becoming an important place for information interaction [1]. People are in a high-pressure working and competitive environment for a long time, which brings not only economic level but also piles up mental stress. Travel is widely popular as an effective way to relax and regulate stress; coupled with the rapid rise of new media such as Douyin, the scenery of tourist attractions is uploaded onto the internet by marketers through short videos for people to enjoy resulting in a gradual increase in people's enthusiasm for travel. In 2023, after three years of epidemic control, China implemented a policy of full liberalisation and the number of travel tickets entering and leaving the country The number of domestic trips during the Spring Festival holiday in 2023 reached 308 million, an increase of 23.1% year-on-year. Tourism consumption showed an explosive rise. Various tourist regions use Shake to visualize the scenery of their attractions, and this innovative tourism marketing strategy has attracted the attention of tourists and promoted the rapid development of local tourism. Xinjiang, as a region with extremely rich natural resources in China, has 56 types of tourism resources, accounting for about 83% of the total number of resource types in the country, as well as a strong ethnic flavour and diverse religious culture, which is unique and distinctive in Asia and the world, and has a high profile at home and abroad. Because of its geographical location in the northwest of China and the wide distribution of tourism resources leading to the waste of its tourism resources; Xinjiang's economy is relatively backward compared to the coastal areas, so there is also a shortage of marketing strategies for tourism development issues, and there are no reasonable and correct marketing tools to promote the development of its tourism industry. This paper analyses the reasons for the changes in Xinjiang's tourism marketing strategy due to the rise of short videos through documentary analysis; analyses the problems and reasons for the current Xinjiang tourism marketing strategy; and proposes suggested solutions for the marketing of Xinjiang's tourism industry; thus can effectively promote the development of Xinjiang's tourism industry. This paper can also provide some references for researchers who study short videos and their impact on the development of tourism in Xinjiang.
2. Introduction to the Development of the Tourism Industry in Xinjiang before the Rise of Short Videos
Before the rise of short videos, Xinjiang's tourism industry had already seen more significant development. Xinjiang is a place with many natural landscapes and historical and cultural heritages, so tourism resources are very rich. Since 2000, Xinjiang's tourism industry has always maintained a relatively rapid growth and tourism revenue has continued to climb away. In response to the needs of the tourism industry, local governments in Xinjiang have increased their support for the tourism industry, investing in the construction of more tourism facilities and services and improving public services. However, Xinjiang is a relatively economically backward region. Although the rapid development of tourism has driven the development of related local industries, including the areas of passenger drinking, accommodation and transportation.
At the same time, there are still some shortcomings in Xinjiang's tourism industry. Although the Xinjiang government has increased its support for the tourism industry and invested a large amount of money to improve public facilities, there is still a gap compared to the market demand. There are still some scenic spots where the transportation and accommodation conditions are still not perfect. There are some uncivilized behaviors, such as littering, spitting and other behaviors that affect the travel experience. As the development of tourism is still relatively rudimentary, the structure of the tourism industry is relatively single, generally relying on a few tourist attractions to support it, without forming a sustainable and stable tourism industry chain throughout the year. The marketing capabilities of the tourism industry in Xinjiang need to be strengthened. In a highly competitive market, Xinjiang's tourism marketing capabilities need to be further improved to enhance its attractiveness to tourists. Overall, Xinjiang's tourism industry was developed before the rise of short videos, but it still faces shortcomings in public services, industrial structure and marketing, and needs to make use of new marketing tools to promote development [2].
3. Impacts of Short Videos on the Development of Marketing Strategies in Xinjiang's Tourism Industry
3.1. The Dominant Role of Short Video Users
Users who make short videos and watch short videos are consumers of short videos. Users who make short videos use the natural resources of Xinjiang as the background, use the natural scenery as the content of the short video, then share it with the corresponding background music and then share it to Douyin when it is watched by users to attract them to come to travel. There are also some users who use their own natural beauty, food and travel tips recorded in Xinjiang as the basis for their videos, adding special effects and music to share with other users for viewing and commenting. Compared to traditional text and influence campaigns, user-led marketing strategies are more flexible and free, and thus play a significant role in the tourism industry [3].
3.2. The Promoting Role of the Platform
When people are watching and commenting on the same type of short video for a long time, they find themselves watching basically the same type of video afterwards. This is the function behind the Douyin platform and the push function. Precision pushing mostly refers to new media prioritizing what users want to see based on the information processing of big data. This is based on big data analysis of different users' browsing, commenting, retweeting and other operations, after which similar videos are continuously pushed to the user, which, after big data analysis, will largely be the content the user wants. When users browse in Douyin many times about Xinjiang's travel tips, scenery, food; learn about humanities and history, the Douyin platform will receive this information and continue to push it to people, thus leading you to deepen your desire to travel to Xinjiang. The Jitterbug platform meets the information needs of its corresponding users through algorithmic precision pushing, achieving an accurate match between users and information and greatly reducing the cost of information dissemination and acquisition. Coupled with the full liberalization of the epidemic and the growing desire for tourism, Xinjiang's tourism industry will rise steadily simply by Douyin’s constant pushing to its corresponding customers [3].
3.3. Cooperation between Xinjiang's Official Departments and Short Videos
Relevant government departments in Xinjiang have established cooperation with the tourism industry and Douyin, setting up corresponding short video accounts in Douyin. The official short video introduces Xinjiang's human and historical heritage, famous ethnic customs and culture, food and natural scenery. Compared to the user-led marketing model, the government-enterprise cooperation is more official and can then highlight the characteristics of Xinjiang and promote the city's development. There are a large number of official government accounts staying in Douyin, including Xinjiang Radio and Television, Xinjiang TV and others. Together they enhance the credibility of Xinjiang's tourism resources, improve the city's image and promote the economic and cultural development of Xinjiang [3].
4. Analysis of the Problems and Causes of Short Video Marketing
4.1. Problems with Video Content
4.1.1. The Content Lacks Authenticity
People all know that Xinjiang has unique natural beauty, and with the processing of post-editing and beautification technology, the scenery of Xinjiang will be even more shocking, so much so that people repeatedly browse the short video content of Xinjiang's beautiful scenery when they leave a stereotypical impression inside. However, when users travel to Xinjiang and find that the scenery is not similar to that in the video content, they will be less enthusiastic about travelling [4].
4.1.2. The Content Lacks Innovation
Because of the low cost of creating short videos, many users will edit and promote the features of Xinjiang, resulting in videos with much of the same content, mostly popular Xinjiang food and tourist attractions, lacking innovation; users will also become bored after long hours of browsing, which is not conducive to the spread of tourism in Xinjiang. Because of the rapid development of the Douyin short video industry, it lacks strict rules and regulations for short video propaganda. Its low threshold has led to the fact that any user can make short videos. It makes it possible for users to make profits despite the poor quality of their video content. There are tourist attractions for the sake of economic development will choose to shoot exaggerated, there is a negative impact of the video to deceive consumers; seriously endanger the tourism development of attractions [4].
4.2. Single Marketing Strategy
Due to the rapid development of the new media industry, as it can interact with information more quickly and conveniently, and spread through new platforms such as the Internet, catering to the fast-paced life, in line with the values of the new contemporary audience. It has led people to gradually start relying on the new media industry, thus neglecting the advantages of traditional media. Nowadays, users are propagating through new media and do not combine and utilise traditional media much. New media is the existence of superb interactivity, wide coverage area; high accuracy; convenience and speed. However, there are negative effects of some of Douyin’s new media video dissemination: such as being too commercial, video content being pompous, and vulgar, full of false information, etc.
4.3. Lack of Targeting of Publicity
There are many tourist attractions in Xinjiang, and each location has its unique architecture or geomorphological scenery. Therefore, the videos in short videos of Douyin are full of the scenery of each location. Xinjiang is such a large area, and the scenery in the south and north of the country is very different. It is possible to promote each attraction vigorously to give people a more comprehensive view of Xinjiang. But most of the attractions promoted are uniform and lack focus, and most of them have no photos taken and uploaded by travelers, making them difficult for people to search in Douyin, which suggests that some of the attractions do not have official publicity channels and are difficult to target.
5. Optimization and Suggestions
5.1. Improve the Quality and Authenticity of Video Content
As purveyors of tourism, users of the short video platform should ensure the quality of content when filming, producing and uploading videos, not indiscriminately, not just looking at the natural scenery, but also needing to understand the cultural connotations of the local area. It is also important to ensure the authenticity of the scenery and not to deceive consumers for the sake of profit. Only by reflecting the true beauty of nature can tourism develop rapidly. At the same time, short video platforms need to gatekeep the content of relevant videos, once again ensuring that users receive the quality and authenticity of the videos. Finally, the platform should seek innovation, highlight the most representative local scenery, dig deep into local history and culture, and make innovative videos that blend scenery and culture [5].
5.2. Enrich Marketing Methods and Expand Publicity Channels
It is undeniable that short video platform such as Douyin is gradually developing into a tool for receiving information that people cannot live without. But this does not mean that people can completely abandon the traditional media industry. As traditional media, they have the exclusive advantage of being information suppliers, with their specialised news teams, long-established brands, extensive information channels and rich experience, traditional media still have the strength to play an important role in marketing and publicity; furthermore, traditional media have a broader participation area and operate in a way that is easy to update. These are not new media such as Douyin that can be developed in the short term. Therefore, we need to take the essence and remove the dross. The development of a combination of old and new media publicity and marketing strategies.
5.3. Improve the Tourism Industry Chain
Some attractions have attracted countless tourists to hit the spot because of the short video push combined with their own good cultural heritage, but the actual experience of tourists is not good, and there is a huge difference between the real scene and the video, leading to negative effects. The attractions themselves, transport facilities, accommodation facilities and the ecological environment are all indispensable indicators for evaluating people's experience when travelling. Each attraction in Xinjiang is far apart from each other, which requires the constant improvement of relevant tourism facilities and services between each tourist attraction, and the construction of an integrated industrial chain of point-to-point tourism services on the basis of showing the unique style of the culture of each region [6].
6. Conclusion
With the rapid development of the short video industry, Xinjiang's tourism industry is also using the short video industry to seek new development; at the same time, it also faces no small challenge. This paper has innovated the marketing model of Xinjiang's tourism industry by improving the authenticity of the video content, enriching the marketing means and expanding the publicity channels, improving the tourism industry chain, which are three targeted suggestions. It provides an optimised solution for the marketing and promotion of Xinjiang's tourism industry. This thesis can also make further analysis on the content of the analysis, such as analysing the marketing strategy of a specific attraction in Xinjiang and optimising and innovating the marketing strategy. In the future, research on the marketing strategy of Xinjiang's tourism industry could also focus on analysing and studying aspects such as exploring more tourism resources and creating a unique Xinjiang brand.