HONG KONG, Feb. 26, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- On 24 February, the Lantern Festival, the 4th Fosun Family Season, which was held for 72 days, concluded successfully with the inaugural digital lighting ceremony of the 2024 Yuyuan Garden Lantern Festival. This year's Fosun Family Season was held during the Chinese New Year period for the first time. Centering around "Celebrating Chinese New Year with Fosun," it brought together more than 60 brands under Fosun including Yuyuan Tourist Mart, Atlantis Sanya, Club Med, Laomiao, and Shede Spirits, and created a festive atmosphere and immersive experience with oriental lifestyle aesthetics for families worldwide, including activities such as enjoying lanterns, drinking wine to celebrate the arrival of spring, wearing gold jewelry, having reunion dinner, getting new clothes, getting glowing skin and sending gifts. In addition, integrating the festive atmosphere, it released more than 80 new products for the Year of the Dragon and hosted thousands of events domestically and internationally to meet consumer demands in areas such as clothing, food, accommodation, tourism, health, wellness, and wealth.
Highlights of this year's Fosun Family Season include total sales exceeding RMB10 billion, the overseas debut of Yuyuan Garden Lantern Festival, and the digital construction of Fosun Family Season. With an emphasis on "stability" and even stronger emphasis on "progress" and "establishment", the highlights of this year's Fosun Family Season sent a more positive signal of high-quality development.
Seek development from "IPs" to stimulate new momentum
During the Lantern Festival, the Yuyuan Garden Lantern Festival in Shanghai once again became a top attraction. The 40-day Yuyuan Garden Lantern Festival kicked off with the lighting of the lantern installation "A Night of Fish and Dragon Dance" and ushered in a lantern-viewing frenzy. During the New Year period, foot traffic exceeded 200,000 in a single day, highlighting the influence of the IP. While receiving good feedback, it also gained more favor from consumers. During the Chinese New Year, Yuyuan Garden Lantern Festival in Shanghai saw people from all over the country and welcomed nearly 700,000 visitors, driving sales of various industries and products to increase by about 50%. To date, this year's Yuyuan Garden Lantern Festival attracted more than 4 million visitors, and the sales performance during the holiday significantly improved.
As a national intangible cultural heritage, the Yuyuan Garden Lantern Festival has been held 29 times. With strong IP attributes, it has potential to make a significant impact in driving dissemination and empowering development. The Yuyuan Garden Lantern Festival's "Adventure of Mountains and Seas" was replicated as an IP content to Rudong, Jiangsu and Shenyang, generating further market resonance and achieving rapid consumption conversion. During the Spring Festival, "Rudong's First Chinese New Year Yuyuan Garden Lantern Festival" held in Forte Shang He Yin Xiang in Rudong saw a 150% increase in average daily foot traffic compared to the previous period, and a nearly 200% increase in sales compared to January, while Sheng Jing Long Cheng in Shenyang saw a 173% year-on-year increase in foot traffic, and a 172% year-on-year increase in sales.
Seeking benefits and development from IPs is an opportunity and a challenge of the times. How can we create IPs with greater impact and vitality? This year's Fosun Family Season gave an answer.
Atlantis Sanya experienced a high level of popularity during the 2024 Spring Festival. From the 26th day of the last month of the lunar calendar to the 11th day of the first month of the lunar calendar, Atlantis Sanya saw a revenue of RMB200 million in 16 days, representing an increase of 22% over the same period in 2023. In particular, non-hotel room revenue (including waterpark, dining, retail, performances) grew significantly. Atlantis Sanya also live-streamed Spring Festival events at the hotel, attracting a large number of non-hotel guests to watch the Year of the Dragon Lantern Festival and the underwater dragon dance performance at Atlantis Sanya. It is reported that for the 2025 Spring Festival, Atlantis Sanya plans to create the largest Chinese New Year Lantern Festival in Hainan, echoing the Yuyuan Garden Lantern Festival in Shanghai to create the ultimate experience and unforgettable memories for guests in both locations.
The integration of traditional IP and innovative IP will create new development breakthroughs that are worth looking forward to.
High-quality cultural provision stimulates endogenous momentum
Since 15 December 2023, 60 large lantern installations and more than 2,000 lanterns from the Yuyuan Garden Lantern Festival in Shanghai, China, have landed Jardin d'Acclimatation in France. With the theme of "Spirit of the Mountains and Seas", the Festival Dragons et Lanternes is inspired by the ancient Chinese mythology "The Classic of Mountains and Seas" written more than 2,000 years ago. It integrates various mythical creatures of the mountains and seas, such as the strong Longma (Dragon & Horse), the soaring Kunpeng (big fish), the powerful Yinglong (flying dragon), and the elegant white deer into 60 lantern installations and more than 2,000 lanterns, showcasing the blessing ritual of Chinese New Year with oriental spiritual essence, and presenting a dazzling Chinese fantasy world to overseas visitors.
Jardin d'Acclimatation, established in the 19th century, has opened an evening session for the Festival Dragons et Lanternes, with tickets priced at 18 euros. Visitors often arrived early, forming long queues that stretch across two blocks before the park opens. During peak hours, Jardin d'Acclimatation recorded a huge foot traffic of 4,000 people per hour. As a result, crowd control measures had to be implemented, and the President of Jardin d'Acclimatation said, "I haven't seen a such huge crowd in years!". After visiting the Festival Dragons et Lanternes in person, officials responsible for public space in some cities around Paris expressed that their desire to introduce the Yuyuan Garden Lantern Festival.
Culture serves as an important pillar for promoting high-quality development. High-quality cultural provision plays an increasingly prominent role in activating corporate momentum, improving the quality of development, and promoting the optimization and upgrading of the economic structure. In this year's Fosun Family Season, the grand scenario Yuyuan Garden Lantern Festival integrated culture and economy to further stimulate the endogenous momentum of the corporate ecosystem. Various dragon-themed products such as dragon lanterns and dragon hats at the Yuyuan Garden Lantern Festival were highly sought after by consumers, with sales increasing by 50% year-on-year; the cultural gene of Laomiao, "good luck", caters to the inner desires of young people, driving the consumption of gold jewelry. During this year's Chinese New Year, Laomiao's sales increased by 45% year-on-year; the sales of Yayi Year of the Dragon gold bars were more than ten times that of other years. It is worth mentioning that as the chief partner of the Yuyuan Garden Lantern Festival in Shanghai, this year marks the third collaboration with the Yuyuan Garden Lantern Festival to jointly showcase cultural integration and oriental craftsmanship. The sales of Shede's Year of the Dragon spirits saw a 39% increase compared to the same period last year.
This year's Fosun Family Season demonstrated the significance of strengthening high-quality culture provision. By transforming cultural resource advantages into industrial advantages, it not only injected new momentum into the high-quality development of enterprise, but also served as an important driving force for economic development. In the future, Fosun will continue to create and replicate more than ten phenomenon event IPs, including Shede aged spirits banquet, Wolves Esports, and Fengjing Market, which are expected to stimulate new momentum in the consumer market.
Digital and physical integrated development to explores new paths
A giant dragon soared from the screen, ascending around the main lighting installation at the central square of Yuyuan Tourist Mart. Guests at the scene turned the pointer of the compass, and thousands of lights lit up instantly. The first digital lighting ceremony in the history of the Yuyuan Garden Lantern Festival completed the seamless integration of online and offline lantern festival, marking a new path for the digital and physical integrated development of Fosun's ecosystem.
The integrated development of the digital economy and the real economy has become a crucial strategic initiative in China's new journey towards modernization. As a global innovation-driven consumer group, Fosun has been committed to enhancing operational efficiency of industries through digitalization. This year's Fosun Family Season integrated various industries and brands under Fosun, including jewelry, commercial districts, dining, beverages, tourism to provide users with cost-effective benefits and products through Alipay special venues, live streaming sessions, etc., resulting in sales exceeding RMB100 million on Alipay.
In particular, Yuyuan took the lead in adopting the same "AR interactive + digital human" technology as the Asian Games opening ceremony on Alipay in offline commercial districts to present the world's first digital lantern festival. To date, over a million people have used Alipay to light up dragon lanterns for blessings, and scanned the AR code to experience the virtual and reality integrated "Adventure of Mountains and Seas"; more than 1.5 million people have watched the Yuyuan Garden AR live stream to enjoy the Yuyuan Garden Lantern Festival and experience the festive atmosphere of Yuyuan Garden from the comfort of their homes; Laomiao, a subsidiary of Fosun, held live streaming sessions on Alipay, with cumulative sales exceeding RMB60 million. During the Lunar New Year's Shopping Festival, Laomiao achieved sales of nearly RMB9 million from a single live streaming session.
"Home is where happiness begins, and household consumption scenario is a scenario that brings happiness to all. In the future, household consumption demand will be even more vibrant, and Fosun will remain committed to its mission of 'creating happier lives for families worldwide'. We will continue focus on the household consumption sector, and constantly create good products, content and scenarios, bringing more happiness to families worldwide," Xu Xiaoliang, Co-CEO of Fosun International said.
