Enjoy exclusive benefits from over 400 merchants with a train or plane ticket to Qingdao within seven days; turning "pass-through traffic" into "retained spending."
A Single Transportation Ticket Stub Unlocks Nearly 700 Discounts for Winter Tourism in Qingdao
This winter, Qingdao is attempting to use a small transportation ticket stub to solve a classic challenge in the tourism and hospitality sector: how to convert inter-city "pass-through traffic" into "retained spending" that delves deeper into the city.
On December 4, the Qingdao Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism, in collaboration with the Municipal Bureau of Commerce and other departments and districts (cities), launched exclusive winter travel discounts centered around the theme "Winter Rhyme of Mountains and Seas · An Encounter with Seagulls in Qingdao." For the first time, this initiative uses "transportation ticket stubs" as a link to systematically integrate the city's cultural and tourism resources. With a train or plane ticket stub arriving in Qingdao within seven days, visitors can unlock nearly 700 exclusive benefits from over 400 merchants, including scenic spots, hotels, cultural and museum venues, restaurants, and cinemas. The event will run until February 28, 2026, covering key spending periods such as New Year's Day and the Spring Festival, allowing tourists to enjoy the unique charm of the Island City throughout the winter.
From seizing opportunities in the large-scale performance market to launching regular winter travel benefits, the innovative practice of converting a transportation ticket stub into a "city-wide utility pass" with a single click represents a crucial step for Qingdao's cultural and tourism sector. It marks a shift from capitalizing on the momentum to strategic development in promoting consumption. What new paradigm for urban cultural and tourism consumption promotion does this small ticket stub embody? The answer lies in the systematic construction of a cultural and tourism consumption ecosystem.
City-Wide Linkage, Activating the Consumption Map
Qingdao's innovation this time is far more than a mere stacking of discounts; it is a systematic restructuring and ecological layout on the supply-side.
Its core vehicle is a newly formed collaborative entity—the "Qingdao Ticket Stub Economy Merchant Alliance." It systematically connects the entire "eat, stay, travel, tour, shop, and entertain" chain with a single ticket stub, creating a trustworthy and high-value consumption environment for tourists. If you were to open a map of Qingdao and mark the 400+ merchants covered by the alliance, you would get a new, city-wide preferred consumption map. During the event period, tourists can use their ticket stubs to climb Laoshan Mountain at half price, experience the "Chasing Gulls and Waves" sea route at half price, visit the Qingdao TV Tower at half price, watch the performance "Dreaming of the Vast Sea" at half price, and experience the immersive theater game "The Awakened Brewer" at a 35% discount, in addition to enjoying a wide range of discounts covering movie-watching, accommodation, and transportation.
Each node on this consumption map corresponds to a tangible "welcome gift from the city." More importantly, the 400+ nodes and nearly 700 benefits are not simply listed along the industrial chain but are interconnected and create synergies, forming a collaborative network that achieves three core efficiencies:
Broad Coverage: Spatially, it achieves "city-wide" coverage, from core landmarks like Laoshan Scenic Area and the Qingdao Olympic Sailing Center Marine Culture and Tourism Area to specialty shops in streets and alleys.
Deep Linkage: The discount design runs through the complete chain of arrival, sightseeing, dining, accommodation, shopping, and entertainment, guiding customer flow between different sectors and creating a closed consumption loop.
Dynamic Expansion: The alliance adopts an open and dynamic management mechanism, ensuring a continuous influx of high-quality supply and maintaining ecological vitality.
The underlying logic it follows is a clear "network effect." The more high-quality nodes (merchants) that join, the greater the overall value of the network to tourists. In turn, the continuous influx and consumption of tourists will attract more merchants to join, forming a self-reinforcing growth flywheel.
Thoughtful Service, Locking in Consumption Decisions
As an international comprehensive transportation hub city, how to transform vast transportation "traffic" into effective "retained spending" poses a challenge to urban management strategies.
Imagine this scenario: you are on a flight at ten thousand meters or in a speeding train carriage. This is the "initial point of consideration" for travelers' consumption decisions about their destination. Holding their ticket stubs for Qingdao, full of anticipation, they begin to think about "what to do, where to stay, and what to eat" upon arrival. However, in the traditional model, information is scattered and passive, often causing this immediate impulse to consume to dissipate quietly amidst the hustle and bustle after arrival.
So, how does Qingdao precisely target and serve this valuable demand? The answer lies in a combination of "convenient online and warm offline" services.
"Zero-Disturbance" Convenient Access: Relying on the unified promotion system of Qingdao Culture and Tourism and the efficient collaborative network built by the Ticket Stub Economy Merchant Alliance, tourists can scan a QR code at transportation hubs and consumption nodes to access a clear event page. Discount details are plainly laid out, and service hotlines can be dialed directly, achieving proactive information delivery and unobtrusive support.
"Face-to-Face" Enthusiastic Service: Innovatively established "Ticket Stub Economy Volunteer Service Points" are planned to cover key hubs like Qingdao Jiaodong International Airport and Qingdao North Railway Station, as well as major tourist service centers. In addition to providing exclusive services for the ticket stub economy, these points serve as physical windows for the city's hospitality, offering travel guides and route recommendations, turning standardized services into a warm experience.
It is these details that systematically push tourists to extend their "arrival decisions" to "consumption decisions," which is also the heartwarming and unique aspect of this round of ticket stub upgrades and expansion in Qingdao.
All-Season Operation, Building a Consumption Ecosystem
The story of Qingdao's "ticket stub economy" begins with a precise catalyst and matures into a progressively growing "urban cultural and tourism consumption ecosystem."
In October of this year, the Qingdao Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism seized the opportunity presented by the large-scale performance market to lead the creation of the Qingdao Ticket Stub Economy Merchant Alliance, attracting over 400 merchants through several rounds of expansion. This one-click conversion of transportation tickets into a "city-wide utility pass" benefits a wider range of people, involves more participants, offers greater discounts, and spans a longer period. It has integrated all business formats from core scenic spots and cultural venues to star-rated hotels, chain restaurants, and leisure cinemas, extending a proven model from a "special express lane" for major events to an infrastructure network covering city-wide passenger flow and all-season operations.
This model, guided by the government, linked by the industry, co-built by merchants, and beneficial to tourists, has verified the efficiency of the alliance mechanism in connecting tourists with consumption scenes via ticket stubs, opening a brand-new gateway to urban consumption. At the same time, through unified service standards and industry self-discipline, it ensures that tourists can enjoy standardized, convenient, and warm services in any corner of Qingdao, feeling the enthusiasm and sincerity of the entire city.
A "small ticket stub" leverages a "large ecosystem" of cultural and tourism consumption. This collaborative cultural and tourism network, covering ten districts (cities) and the entire experience chain of "eat, stay, travel, tour, shop, and entertain," has propelled Qingdao's "ticket stub economy" to achieve a consumption linkage leap from "a single performance" to "an entire city." In the future, Qingdao will continue to optimize the operational mechanism of the Ticket Stub Economy Merchant Alliance, constantly expand consumption scenes, and focus on creating a regular, branded platform for promoting consumption and benefiting the public. It will summarize successful experiences and replicate them in key new consumption tracks such as the romance economy, wellness tourism, and study tours, continuously exploring the "Qingdao model" for innovative development in cultural and tourism integration, and injecting sustained momentum into cultivating a vibrant, city-wide cultural and tourism consumption ecosystem. (By Ma Xiaoting, Qingdao Daily / Guanhai News)
Editor: Yuan Ruichen
