Check in at Suzhou’s new landmark: Ctrip Travel Photography collaborates with Suzhou Culture and Tourism Bureau to create a new model of cultural-tourism integration ... ...

During the Qingming holiday, the “Check in at Suzhou’s New Landmarks” campaign jointly organized by Ctrip Travel Photography and the Suzhou Culture and Tourism Bureau reached its climax. It brought together multiple Suzhou attractions both online and offline, showcasing the city’s outstanding cultural and tourism offerings to travelers nationwide. During the event, online participation reached hundreds of thousands, while the official Weibo topic generated over a million discussions, successfully driving traffic to Suzhou tourism, empowering the city’s cultural-tourism brand, and opening a new chapter in integrated cultural-tourism development.

Image source: Ctrip Travel Photography

New landmarks: Diverse check-in spots cater to both popular and niche interests, presenting a panoramic view of Suzhou

In recent years, the Suzhou Culture and Tourism Bureau has actively fostered a high-quality environment for all-for-one tourism development and a system for independent travelers, embracing the era of mass tourism. Ctrip Travel Photography also selected Suzhou—one of the platform’s most beloved destinations—as the first stop in its nationwide campaign to create top internet-famous check-in spots.

The campaign promoted a diverse range of both popular and niche attractions, showcasing Suzhou’s urban image in multiple dimensions. Not only did well-known sites such as the Gate of the Oriental Dawn and Seven Mile Lane spark heated discussions, but lesser-known cultural venues like the Suzhou Museum of Imperial Kiln Brick and the Suzhou Museum also became new hotspots for travel influencers, allowing visitors to learn while exploring, enjoy while learning, and share their experiences instantly on Ctrip Travel Photography. This enables travelers to combine leisure with social interaction, achieving monetization through cultural-tourism integration and continuously enhancing brand value.

Image source: Ctrip Travel Photography

New traffic: Participation by Gen Z boosts Suzhou-related content both online and offline

Young people born after 1995 are gradually becoming the main force in travel. By the end of 2018, users under 30 accounted for half of Ctrip’s total user base. Ctrip Travel Photography was created for young travel enthusiasts, aiming to build the top domestic travel + lifestyle platform. It is Ctrip’s most user-centric content-sharing format and channel in the mobile internet era. Built upon Ctrip’s massive user base of millions, it brings together numerous celebrities, influencers, and top-tier travel experts who share travel stories and life attitudes through photos, videos, and short clips, helping young people find travel styles that better match their interests.

Image source: Ctrip Travel Photography

Online buzz-building

During the campaign, Ctrip Travel Photography featured check-in content—text, photos, and videos—from KOL experiences, quickly generating widespread online discussion around the “Check in at Suzhou’s New Landmarks” theme. At the same time, marketing efforts via Weibo super topics, homepage ads on Ctrip, recommendation cards in the Ctrip Travel Photography feed, and popular topics helped convert traffic into bookings for related tourism products, accelerating the spread of Suzhou’s tourism brand.

Image source: Ctrip Travel Photography

Offline interaction

The event not only set up check-in spots at multiple attractions for on-site promotion but also hosted a two-day offline photography exhibition on April 5–6, issuing on-site check-in invitations.

New content: High-quality visual and written content inspires independent travelers

Ctrip Travel Photography not only rapidly built a large-scale travel sharing platform within months but also made Suzhou—the first internet-famous city—hugely popular across Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai.

It is reported that Suzhou receives over 100 million visitors annually, with independent travelers accounting for as much as 85%. Independent and semi-independent travelers prefer flexible itineraries and unique tourism products, but traditional travel guides they often rely on are mostly “post-trip reviews” with limited timeliness. Ctrip Travel Photography completely changes how travel is documented. Its content focuses on short-form visuals and videos centered on travel, which can be created and shared anytime, anywhere using just a smartphone. As a result, readers can stay updated with the author on sights, fees, and seasonal offerings.

Ctrip Travel Photography presents a wealth of high-quality, personalized content generated from individual experiences. Through word-of-mouth and viral topics, it creates multiple touchpoints that inspire more travel enthusiasts. The campaign highlighted distinctive Suzhou tourism elements and cultural highlights—such as “touching golden bricks, riding the bus, wearing long johns, staying in a schoolhouse, strolling ancient streets, enjoying Pingtan storytelling, admiring traditional courtyards, and rowing wooden boats”—emphasizing uniqueness, creativity, and local character. These elements transformed Suzhou’s “diverse, refined, small-scale, and scattered” tourism resources into must-visit internet-famous spots for young travelers.

Image source: Ctrip Travel Photography

In this collaboration with the Suzhou Culture and Tourism Bureau, Ctrip Travel Photography leveraged its advantages in platform scale, traffic volume, big data, and international reach, relying on Suzhou’s rich cultural and tourism resources to help the city accelerate its global tourism development. Ctrip Travel Photography users share content with a highly global perspective. With the support of Ctrip’s leading destination resources, they explore more popular and niche spots, producing targeted and diverse content. This premium content further translates into efficient bookings, creating the shortest possible feedback loop where travel photography and Ctrip’s core business mutually reinforce each other, offering users more comprehensive products and services.

Image source: Ctrip Travel Photography

Currently, Ctrip Group’s Government Resources Cooperation Department has partnered with over 300 destinations. Wondering which city will become the next internet-famous check-in spot during the May Day holiday? Stay tuned for the next Ctrip Travel Photography event!