Recently, a silver-haired tourist train called "Panda Special Train to Spring" set off from Chengdu, Sichuan and headed to Anshun, Guizhou, carrying more than 200 middle-aged and elderly tourists to embrace flowers in spring. During the journey, in addition to enjoying flowers and spring, tourists will also participate in train-themed activities with ethnic minority style such as Sichuan Opera face-changing, Miao singing and dancing, and Buyi grand welcome.
According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, as of the end of 2024, the population aged 60 and above in my country exceeded 300 million for the first time. As the degree of aging continues to deepen and the elderly consumer group continues to expand, the "silver-haired people" have become an important source of customers in the tourism market. The opening of the silver-haired tourism train will not only allow the elderly to better pursue "poetry and distant places", but also an important fulcrum for leveraging the trillion-level silver-haired economic market.
In recent years, driven by the demand for silver-haired tourism, new scenarios and new business formats in the tourism market have emerged and are becoming more and more popular among elderly friends. But at the same time, the "silver-haired people" are still subject to some restrictions on going out. The products involving elderly tourism are relatively single and the high-quality supply is insufficient, making it difficult to fully meet the diversified needs of elderly tourists; some tourism products have problems such as low service quality and excessive commercialization, which affects the tourists' experience.
At present, the tourism needs of the elderly have transitioned from basic sightseeing to higher-level cultural and leisure consumption, which requires innovation in tourism products and services and providing more abundant tourism options for the elderly to travel.
Innovative tourism products are the core supply to meet the diverse needs of Yinhai tourism. Localities should be encouraged to build elderly-friendly tourism destinations, strengthen the age-friendly transformation of tourist attractions and resorts, and actively develop multi-level and personalized elderly-specific tourism products. All localities should also pay attention to the differentiation of tourism products, combine local industrial development, natural scenery, historical and cultural resources, and combine them with health and wellness vacation, rural leisure, health and medical industry formats according to local conditions, and provide high-quality silver-haired tourism products for the elderly of different age groups, health conditions and consumption capacity. For example, in September last year, the General Office of the Jiangsu Provincial Government issued the "Implementation Plan for Promoting the High-Quality Development of the Silver Hairdressing Economy", which clearly proposed to develop products such as nostalgic tours, youth tours, and ecological health tours, and promote a number of demonstration attractions and routes for elderly tourism (travelling) to guide tourism and insurance business operators to replace age constraints with health conditions, and promote the high-quality development of Silver Hairdressing Tourism.
Innovative tourism services are a key part of improving the silver-haired tourism experience. All localities should establish professional elderly tourism service teams around the new needs of the elderly to travel, and provide special services such as full-time care, medical insurance, and emergency treatment; to meet the diversified needs of the elderly to travel, personalized services such as private tour guides, exclusive itinerary design, and slow-paced tourism to meet their differentiated needs. We also use technological power well, use modern technologies such as smart devices, VR, and AI to develop intelligent tourism assistants to provide elderly tourists with a convenient travel experience.
Model innovation is an important means to break through the bottleneck of silver-haired tourism development. All localities should promote the development of new tourism models such as "Internet + Silver Travel", use big data and artificial intelligence technology to accurately portray the needs of elderly tourists, and innovate and launch more and better tourism products. Localities can also connect urban tourism resources, expand the radiation range of the silver-haired tourism market through new models such as cooperative development and shared development, build a full-chain silver-haired tourism development model, and actively embrace the silver-haired economy. (Author: Jiang Bo)
