Creativity Empowers Cultural Heritage, Converts Traffic into Long-term Vitality — Luoyang Activates New Vitality of Ancient Capital's Culture and Tourism with New Quality Productivity

During the just-concluded 2026 Spring Festival holiday, the cultural and tourism market in Luoyang, Henan, boomed, with tourism revenue exceeding 10 billion yuan in 9 days and achieving steady growth for three consecutive Spring Festival holidays, demonstrating the unique charm and strong appeal of this millennium-old ancient capital. Behind the double harvest of passenger flow and income, how to transform short-term popularity into long-term vitality and transient traffic into sustainable development momentum has become a new task for the high-quality development of Luoyang's cultural and tourism industry. Today, with creativity as the core and new quality productivity as the engine, the ancient city is breaking the "resource-dependent" development model and moving towards a "creativity-driven" transformation path, bringing new life to the millennium-old cultural heritage through innovative practices.

Activating cultural resources in light of local conditions and revitalizing old heritage are the core paths for Luoyang's cultural and tourism transformation. Entering Sui-Tang Luoyang City, the Lantern Festival broke the monotonous presentation of traditional lanterns. Taking cultural relics such as the "Painted Holding Hands Female Figurine", the treasure of Luoyang Museum, as prototypes, it created creative dynamic light groups of various shapes and arrangements. The lights changed with the rhythm of music, transforming static cultural relics into observable and perceptible cultural landscapes, integrating millennium-old Tang Dynasty symbols into modern aesthetics, and enabling old cultural relics to tell new stories with a "fashionable" expression, allowing tourists to travel through time and space and immerse themselves in the magnificent atmosphere of the prosperous Tang Dynasty while wandering.

Beyond the innovative expression of historical sites, Luoyang has taken on a new look with scenery everywhere, integrating the ancient city's fireworks with cultural charm. The century-old Xigong Small Street, adhering to the concept of "high planning and micro-renovation", has injected new vitality while retaining the original style of old buildings and plaques, revitalizing the old block. Once a street dominated by traditional snacks, it now boasts numerous creative stores. A 70-year-old time-honored store has adapted to trendy needs and launched characteristic services such as Hanfu photography; the well-known Baima Temple fresh milk in Luoyang combined with secret peony scented tea has created a limited-edition peony milk tea, which has become a popular item among tourists. This small street of only over 1,000 meters is embedded with more than 400 consumption points, connecting coherent scenes of shopping, eating, checking in and cultural experience, activating the market vitality of more than 800 merchants in the area, and making the traditional street a new consumption landmark with both fireworks and cultural charm.

Latest data show that during the 2026 Spring Festival holiday, Luoyang received a total of over 13 million tourists and achieved a tourism revenue of over 10.5 billion yuan. A number of scenic spots such as Luoyi Ancient City and Laojun Mountain became popular on social media, continuously brightening the golden brand of "Night Luoyang" and boosting the sustained rise of cultural and tourism popularity of the millennium-old ancient capital. Today, Luoyang is dotted with more than 110 museums and memorial halls of various types, making the whole city like an "open-air museum" and a real-scene display of Chinese culture. Luoyi Ancient City, in particular, has become a popular cultural and tourism check-in spot with characteristic formats such as Hanfu experience.

On the basis of retaining traffic, Luoyang has further strived to promote the value leap of cultural and tourism, allowing traffic to feed back industrial development and achieve a key transformation from "scale growth" to "value improvement". During the Spring Festival holiday, Luoyang Museum innovatively launched the "Museum Wonderful Night" activity, cleverly combining immersive performances with small theaters, breaking the traditional mode of cultural relic display, letting cultural relics out of the display cabinets, and "historical figures" shuttling through the exhibition halls to interact with tourists at any time. This transformed tourists from "onlookers" to "participants", allowing them to feel the profound charm of Heluo culture through immersive experience and making "spending the New Year in the museum" a new fashion for Spring Festival cultural and tourism.

The continuous precipitation of cultural and tourism traffic has continuously spawned diverse new formats and driven the comprehensive upgrading of the industrial chain. Once a bustling old industrial factory building has now been transformed into a metaverse "science fiction park" popular among young people, achieving the perfect integration of industrial heritage and cultural and tourism creativity; the booming "Hanfu craze" has continued to heat up, driving the number of Hanfu operators in Luoyang to surge from less than 100 to more than 1,600, forming a full-chain service system of "design, rental, makeup and photography" and driving a large number of jobs; nearly 100 immersive interactive performances in the corners of the blocks have broken the fixed performance boundaries, allowing tourists in Hanfu to have a dialogue with millennium-old history while moving forward, further enriching the consumption experience and increasing the added value of consumption.

In the past three years, Luoyang's cultural and tourism "accounts" have shown a distinct trend of quality and efficiency improvement. The growth rate of tourism revenue has continued to outpace that of tourist arrivals, reflecting the profound transformation of cultural and tourism development from "scale expansion" to "value leap". Tourists who once passed by in a hurry are now willing to stop in the elaborately built immersive blocks, taste the "Luoyang Feast" and experience traditional culture. Luoyang is steadily transforming transient "traffic" into tangible consumption "retention" and industrial "growth", truly converting cultural and tourism popularity into development results.

With creativity as the core, it empowers the high-quality development of cultural and tourism. Luoyang has broken the traditional mode of "cultural relic display", taken new quality productivity as the guide, reshaped the cultural and tourism industrial model with creativity as the core, and reconstructed the cultural narrative logic through immersive experience, integrated formats and interactive technology, transforming millennium-old heritage into interactive, experienceable and consumable carriers. The ancient city has always focused on tourist needs, updated supply from the user's perspective, and promoted the development of cultural and tourism from "having history" to "creating experience", and from "being seen" to "being needed", making the ancient history and culture no longer cold, but more warm, experiential and attractive.

Today, Luoyang is activating cultural heritage with creativity and driving development with innovation. While protecting millennium-old heritage, it constantly explores new paths for the integration of culture and tourism, making the cultural and tourism industry a vivid practice of developing new quality productivity in light of local conditions. In the future, Luoyang will continue to empower traditional culture with new technologies and creativity, continuously promote the quality and efficiency of the cultural and tourism industry, maintain the long-term popularity of the millennium-old ancient capital's cultural and tourism, let more people feel the unique charm of Heluo culture, and write a new chapter in the high-quality development of the ancient capital's cultural and tourism.