Tourism: proving you’re there

On a recent trip to Jiuzhaigou national park (see our photoset on Flickr here), we noticed how people would very rarely take pictures of the beautiful surrounding scenery. Rather, they put themselves and/or their family members right in the middle of the shot.

We asked people why:

“How would my friends back home know I was really there”

“I can prove and show to others that I really saw Jiuzhaigou”

“I could take any picture from the internet from Paris and tell my friends I was there”

“I paid over RMB1200 to buy day passes for me and my family, I want to show others that we were able to take this trip together”

Given most of the folks we spoke to were from 2nd and 3rd tier cities, it comes as little surprise that this group of people is keen to show others their ‘worldliness’. Perhaps less so for people living in 1st tier cities, travel is still very much about proving you have both the time and money to take a holiday – the setting is almost secondary.

An opportunity for camera makers:

• Wifi enabled cameras that directly download your photos to a social networking page or profile
• Ability to create a postcard on-screen and send to family members via emailing/MMS function
• Contact and address book function inside camera

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 15th, 2010 at 6:14 pm. It is filed under China, Tourism, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.