Cultural industry entering cool down period(2)

Considering the above factors, it's easy to understand why Spiral Show suffered setbacks. First comes transportation and hotels. The Haitangwan suburb where the Wanda theater was built is 28 kilometers from Sanya's city center. Although according to the local government's development plans international five-star hotels like Hilton and Starwood are scheduled to be built in the coming years, currently only a few high-end luxury hotels exist in the area. Although Wanda most likely intended the wealthy vacationers staying in this area to be the main part of their audience, there just wasn't a big enough audience pool. Meanwhile, the long distance from the city center meant it was just too inconvenient for low-to-mid-end travelers to see the show, which limited potential audience numbers.

Although Wanda jumped high, in the end its plans fell flat. The only reason the Spiral Show has managed to survive until now has been due to the constant financial support given to it by the group.

Proceed with caution

Although China is seen as having huge potential when it comes to the cultural industry, it wasn't until 2004 when director Zhang Yimou's Impression series reached the public that investors truly began paying attention to the industry.

That year, Impression Liu Sanjie premiered in Guilin, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, making a huge impact on audiences. Subsequent performances such as 2007's Impression West Lake in Hangzhou, Impression Hainan Island in 2009, and others also continued to impress.

In 2009, the Ministry of Culture and the National Tourism Administration issued a joint plan to encourage similar stage works in order to boost local tourism and cultural development.

Incentivized by policy support, the success of the Impression series, as well as the prospect of a huge tourism market, local governments and some wealthy companies got caught up in an almost unstoppable cultural tidal wave.

Figures from the China Association of Performing Arts (CAPA) show that as of April of this year there are more than 300 tourism performances with more than 2 million yuan in investments currently underway across the country.

However, it seems that in many cases, these performances may have jumped the gun. In Hainan, among the 11 performances at tourism spots, five are losing money, while two have been shut down. In Hulun Buir, Inner Mongolia, the large-scale performance The Pride of Heaven - Genghis Khan, which premiered in 2009 and was labeled part of the city's cultural brand, ended in 2012.

According to CAPA research, 117 of these 300 performances show a 10 to 30 percent year on year decline in revenue, while some have even suffered a 50 percent decline.

It seems that, just like the theme-park fever that struck many of the nation's cities several years ago, the current tourism performance industry is cooling down as local governments and companies gain experience and avoid blind investment.

Like many other emerging industries in China, the performance sector within the cultural industry is sure to gain a solid foothold after an initial chaotic phase. However, the shorter this phase can be, the better it will be for all involved.