Summary
The Forbidden City is a representative element of Chinese traditional culture and an important cultural heritage. Every year, tens of millions of tourists visit the Forbidden City. Due to complex management systems and outdated operating models, the experience of visiting the Forbidden City has not been excellent. After using the digital business model, the image of the Forbidden City have basically been updated in all directions. This blog will analyze the exciting cooperation between the traditional Forbidden City and modern digital commerce from the perspective of ticket purchase and using of new media.
Ticket sales
The Palace Museum visited more than 15 million people in 2012, making it the most visited museum in the world each year. In the past, the ticket sales in the Forbidden City were mainly based on queuing tickets on the spot, and visitors often experienced poor experiences because of long queues. In 2014, the Forbidden City tried to implement reservation booking on the entire network, which was only used by 2% of people at the beginning. Until the popularity of mobile payments in the following years, the Palace Museum took advantage of this opportunity to increase the proportion of online ticket purchases year by year. In order to solve the problem of a large number of tourists queuing for tickets, the Forbidden City allows WeChat and Alipay ports to purchase tickets. At present, the online ticket purchase rate of the Forbidden City tickets exceeds 75%.
The Palace Museum provides audiences with as many ticket purchasing channels as possible through the establishment of ticket purchasing websites and the production of mobile apps. Ticketing at the Forbidden City has become more time-saving and convenient, and the Palace Museum has used online ticketing to arrange visits, which greatly improves the visit experience and security. The National Palace Museum is gradually reducing or even canceling on-site ticket sales.
New media
Since 2012, the Forbidden City has begun new media operations, and the Forbidden City has begun publishing relevant information and presenting exhibits on Sina Weibo. The use of the history of digital business science for the Forbidden City not only allows the audience to understand some unusual collections every day, but also allows the audience to have a good impression of the Forbidden City. As of now, the number of Weibo fans on the Palace Museum has reached more than 3 million. Then in 2014, the official WeChat account of the Palace Museum-“Tiny Palace” was officially launched. The Palace Museum uses social media to show audiences the collections in the Palace Museum quickly and easily.
In order to allow the public to better understand the information of the collection and the stories behind it, the Palace Museum developed the first app in 2013, “The Beauty Map”. The Palace Museum used digital technology to create a popular science platform to allow audiences to get closer And appreciate the Forbidden City culture. According to data statistics, two weeks after its launch, the “The Beauty Map” was downloaded more than 200,000, and was awarded the “2013 Best App of the Year” by Apple. In the next few years, the Palace Museum successively launched 7 apps, which added more interactive experiences and fun based on appreciation and education. They integrate the cultural resources of the Forbidden City’s collections, architecture, exhibitions, academics, etc., and create a completely new museum interactive experience for the audience. The performance of “Daily Forbidden City” is particularly outstanding. It achieved 16th place in the iOS life list, and the overall list entered the Top200, which was also a great success.
In 2017, the Palace Museum and Tencent jointly announced the establishment of the “Forbidden City Museum-Tencent Group Joint Innovation Lab”. In cooperation with Tencent, the Forbidden City can use technology advantages to let the antiquities of the Palace Museum enter the lives of ordinary people, which can make the Palace Museum more direct Communicate with people. At the same time, Tencent’s influence among youth groups has also helped the Palace Museum better understand the youth’s psychology, which helps the Palace Museum to launch products that better meet their needs and enter the public vision with a younger look. Being able to capture the mental state of the masses and complete self-expression for them is an important way to win online resonance. Understanding young people’s psychology and Internet culture is an important reason why the Forbidden City has attracted attention in new media channels.
In essence, the digitization of cultural heritage and new media marketing are still telling past stories in a new way, based on understanding people’s needs, conveying constant cultural connotations. The younger generation has gradually become the main crowd to visit cultural venues. They like to pay attention to the trendy and hot phenomenon on social media. Traditional cultural products need to be combined with modern media products to be more easily accepted.
Reference article
A Summary of the Digital Construction Concepts and Practices of Museums–Taking the Digital Palace Museum as an Example
Bearman, D., & Geber, K. (2008). Transforming cultural heritage institutions through new media. Museum Management and Curatorship, 23(4), 385-399.
Kalay, Y., Kvan, T., & Affleck, J. (Eds.). (2007). New heritage: New media and cultural heritage. Routledge.
Proctor, N. (2010). Digital: Museum as platform, curator as champion, in the age of social media. Curator: The Museum Journal, 53(1), 35-43.
Russo, A. (2012). The rise of the ‘media museum. Heritage and social media: Understanding heritage in a participatory culture, 145-157.
Website of the Palace Museum: https://www.dpm.org.cn/Home.html
Zewei Liu Blog 
Hi, Liu,
I learned something new after reading your blog. The new working model of the Palace Museum makes it stand out from the traditional museum model, which makes the Palace Museum better able to serve the public. Also, I have a question to ask. In the information construction of the museum, the establishment of the underlying data table is the critical factor. But how to create an information system, how to establish the basic data table, different professionals have different understanding and solution. If we take the construction process of the cultural relics management information system of the Palace Museum as an example, what are the fundamental problems they have encountered and how to deal with them?
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Hi,
Nice to see your comment.
Regarding the establishment of the museum information system, the biggest difficulty for the Forbidden City is that it has huge relics and thousands of rooms. Statistics and entering information is a very large project. The best way is to use digital databases. The question is how so many cultural relics should be displayed. The Palace Museum uses a variety of image technologies, including pictures, videos, AR, VR, etc.
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Hi! This is a wonderful blog about the new changes that digital business models are bringing to the Forbidden City. I went to the Palace Museum more than ten years ago. In my impression, the experience of visiting the Palace Museum at that time was very single, even a little boring. Only those with a keen interest in history and culture may find the exhibits truly fascinating. But it’s not hard to see from the blog that the ancient Palace Museum has taken on a new look after going digital, offering visitors a more sophisticated experience with advanced technology. The application of digital business models in the Palace Museum has been remarkably successful.
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Hi Liu,
Your article struck a chord with me. The transformation of the Palace Museum is indeed a historic transformation. When I was five years old, I went to the Palace Museum. There were no electronic tickets available at that time and it was crowded. However, in recent years, the release of several apps in the Palace Museum has enabled people to have a detailed understanding of the Palace Museum offline. I have also downloaded and experienced these apps, which makes people sigh for the transformation of traditional classics into modern electronic forms.
In addition, the Palace Museum has opened a store on Taobao, China’s largest online trading app, which sells items popular with young people, such as lipstick and stationery. The Palace Museum’s online store will have an operating profit of about 1 billion yuan in 2019. Now the British museum even has a shop on Taobao, which is popular with the Chinese people. Therefore, in the contemporary era, e-commerce brings unlimited business opportunities to traditional culture, and even brings cultural integration.
The Palace Museum has achieved obvious results in domestic, then, how to let more foreign friends know the Palace Museum? Because when I study abroad in recent years, I have found that in the European and American countries, many people for European culture is very interested in, but for Asian culture, they are confused or even know nothing. Therefore, how the Forbidden City show itself better to the world in the future?
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Hi Ruoxi,
I think the digitization of the Forbidden City and the use of the digital economy are very good ways and opportunities to introduce itself to tourists from all over the world. The Forbidden City is one of the symbols of China and one of the most famous palaces and museums in the world, but not everyone has the opportunity to come to the Forbidden City in person, or foreign tourists do not have enough time and knowledge to understand it. But when people can see the Forbidden City from the web and mobile apps, everyone has the opportunity to learn more about it.
Of course, I think the most necessary work for introducing the Forbidden City to non-Chinese tourists is to translate the existing digital materials in English and other mainstream languages, and upload rich information on social media platforms such as Twitter and YouTube.
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Hi Liu,
On the one hand, as the most valuable tourist attraction in China, in order to effectively implement the entire network ticketing program, the Palace Museum upgraded the supporting system and facilities in the preparatory stage, developed a variety of ticket purchasing methods, and purchased tickets to the audience in the months ahead. Guide and gradually realize the conversion of offline ticket purchase to online ticket purchase. With the implementation of this measure, the number of spectators in the Forbidden City increased throughout the year, and the problem of queuing was also solved, ensuring the quality of visitors’ visits and enjoying better quality museum services.
But on the other hand, how will the Forbidden City strengthen its refined management based on big data analysis, so that viewers can choose from various subdivisions, such as choosing their own time?
Research-worthy blog post, look forward to your new one.
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Hi Shuo,
Very interesting question, digitization is just the beginning for the huge cultural resources of the Forbidden City. The use of big data analysis is a very important means for optimizing the visit method and improving the visit experience. In fact, the National Palace Museum has used big data for analysis in its plan to control the daily number of visitors. By analyzing the number of visitors in different seasons and time periods, the Palace Museum has successfully limited the daily number of visitors during the peak period to no more than 80,000 people.
The use of big data to analyze tourists is a task that the Forbidden City continues to do. Not only is it to analyze the tourists who come to the Forbidden City, it should also analyze what users prefer when viewing the Forbidden City on the Internet to optimize their own exhibitions.
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It must be said that the transformation of traditional business models into digitalization has not only promoted the operation of museums, but also greatly facilitated people’s lives. I agree with the last sentence of your article: ‘In essence, the digitization of cultural heritage and new media marketing are still based on understanding people ’s needs and conveying information in a new way based on past stories. ’However, historical museums are often very attractive to young people because they subjectively think that museums are boring. The article describes the cooperation between the museum and Tencent at the end. What I would like to know is how do they cooperate? There is also a comparison of results before and after cooperation.
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The Forbidden City has huge cultural assets, and Tencent has top digital technology and online platforms
They will cooperate in these areas:
1.Tencent uses AI and other technologies to assist the deep digital construction of the Forbidden City
2. They co-hosted the “NEXT IDEA” youth creativity contest to promote the combination of traditional culture and digital creativity in the form of games, animation, music, etc.
3. The Forbidden City will use Tencent’s social media platform to promote
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Hello Zewei,
Your post was definitely interesting. The subject you picked reminds me of one of the article, we encountered on the first week of the Mooc, on Vista AR, which was aiming, just like the Forbidden city initiatives, to revive the interest for cultural heritage.
It seems that the innovation lab managers in charge with the digitalization of the Museum succeeded to do that on a much larger scale. However, my main interrogation remains and have been exacerbated when I browsed through the comments of people that preceded me on your post.
To what extent is the “digital gadgetization” of historical artefacts at the service of profit? You stated that “the Palace Museum launch products that better meet their needs (young people)”. Again, is it the role of history to fulfill “needs”? Knowledge is not used up, worn out or consumed. In my opinion, this is a very mediocre “social-value” offering. However to develop a successful business model appears to be essential to preserve the jewels of human history and I am grateful for that.
Could you think of a more “knowledge-elevating” way of using digital progress without sacrificing the necessary subsidies coming out from the current model?
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Hi,
Thank you for thinking about the digital use of the Forbidden City and cultural heritage.
Regarding your question, the significance of using digital tools to make products about history and culture is to stimulate people’s interest and deepen their understanding. The Forbidden City has millions of fans’ online accounts and its own online store, but its fundamental purpose is not at all to fame or sales of online products. The Forbidden City does not care about income, and the purpose of making digital products in the Forbidden City is not just to let young people spend time. The point is that watching a Forbidden City documentary or having a bookmark with a cultural relic pattern can make a young person interested in history. People need to be stimulated, and the energy of the digital economy lies in it, and this purpose is not mediocre at all.
The treasures that have been displayed and followed in the Forbidden City are only a small part. Using digital commerce will not obliterate the original meaning of cultural relics. On the contrary, it opens up a new way for people to understand the real cultural treasures.
Regarding a more “knowledge-elevating” way, I think the easiest way is to promote the products of the Forbidden City to people outside the Chinese group.
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Thanks to zewei for sharing the Digital Palace, I found out that China is also actively combining traditional culture with modern technology, and thus attracting more attention and making traditional culture better inherited. I visited the Forbidden City in Beijing when I was 11 years old. The Forbidden City at that time was a boring large building for me, and the exhibits inside were very boring. After reading your description, I feel that the addition of new technology has increased the interest and enthusiasm of children and young people who want to learn about ancient Chinese culture, and I am also very proud of the development of traditional Chinese culture to embrace new trends.
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A really interesting post Liu. Since 2012, the Forbidden City has undergone a series of changes: online ticket sales have become popular; the railings that were used to control the flow of people have been removed, and security personnel have been used for flow control and inspection; many cultural relics that were once buried in warehouses have been restored and moved On the exhibition hall; a series of Forbidden City cultural products such as the Emperor’s Emoji package, the Forbidden City mobile phone case, and the Forbidden City App appeared. In my opinion, the digital business model of the Forbidden City allows historical and cultural resources to truly enter people’s lives. This change allowed the influence of the Forbidden City’s cultural relics to step out of the compound and into everyone’s heart. However, do you think that the digital business model of the Forbidden City makes the museum over-commercialized, and is this a disadvantage?
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Hi,
The Forbidden City needs to be displayed and discovered. As long as its commercial products do not affect the image of the Forbidden City and it can maintain the cultural and aesthetic standards, I think the digital business model will not be related to excessive commercialization.
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