Cultural Tourism Scene Creation: Moving from Set Design to Scene Thinking

Key points

• A January 2025 State Council General Office document calls for new consumption scenes, supporting immersive experience spaces in museums, scenic areas, districts, cruise ships and buses.
• A November 2025 document further calls for accelerating digital technology in culture and tourism and integrating digital performance, digital art and immersive experiences.
• The author stresses that space must not become a mere backdrop; it should build a field with cultural narrative capacity, preserve historical memory and design sensible visitor flows.
• Business mixes should follow curatorial logic, selecting tenants around a cultural theme and prioritizing content-driven formats such as craft workshops and independent bookstores.
• Technology should avoid gimmickry; building a flexible content-update mechanism matters more than chasing new tech, with culture as the soul.
• Scene implementation requires attention to cultural translation, resident participation and dramatic tension, with host-guest sharing as the foundation of long-term vitality.