Chapter 1097 — This Beats Robbing a Bank by a Mile
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
Tourism.
To be honest, this topic was a bit beyond Meitzen's depth — and probably beyond the depth of most dragons in Tarronde.
In its days of glory and strength, Tarronde had been advanced in everything. The dragons, bored out of their minds, had turned nearly every form of entertainment into an art — yet the word "tourism" alone had never had any place in dragon life. Externally, Tarronde was sealed off completely, enforcing under the Great Shield a strict policy that barred all visitors; internally, Tarronde had been stagnant for a million years, and what had stagnated along with society was the daily life of vast numbers of lower-class dragons. Add to that the abuse of enhancement agents, the extreme development of virtual entertainment, the replacement of traditional amusements by extreme competitive sports, and so on — the dragons had long since lost any concept of a tourism industry, and a "working dragon" like Meitzen, born under a company order, even more so...
But that did not stop her from grasping the concept Gao Yang was describing. She was simply full of doubt about its feasibility: "Is that all it takes? Bring people from Loren to Tarronde, protect them well, and then they will just open their purses?"
"That is the most basic level. But if you truly intend to run this as a major venture, the basics alone will not be enough," Gao Yang said, his interest in the matter suddenly immense — this was not merely a chance to win over the dragons and probe further into Tarronde's secrets. If handled properly, it would also be the first time in Loren's history that the continent established exchange with another land, and the foundational, driving effect this would have on countless unexplored fields was beyond imagining. "You should build a full range of supporting services. For instance, set up tourism agencies at every level on Loren — you should be familiar with that; the Mithril Vault's operations in this area give you at least some foundation. Second, you should design suitable 'sightseeing routes' on Loren and squeeze as much profit out of them as possible. You could also run some value-added services and the like..."
Gao Yang deliberately spoke in general terms, and this indeed further stoked Meitzen's interest. The blue dragon lady immediately leaned closer: "And the specifics?"
"First, the people interested in a mysterious land like Tarronde come in many kinds. There are ordinary citizens with a little savings and a lot of curiosity; adventurers with an exploratory spirit; scholars interested in dragon culture and exotic knowledge; and nobles with heads full of novel ideas and more money than sense. You need to divide your services into tiers according to these groups — an economy tour, a premium tour, a luxury tour, plus a few specialized cultural study tours, exotic exploration tours, and so on. In truth, the places you take them are mostly the same — after all, you only have so many safe zones over there — but when you advertise, you must draw clear distinctions. Make every tier sound alluring enough, yet make each sound like a different class of experience. Then set up waystations and inns of matching tiers, so that every coin spent seems worth it...
"Next, the sightseeing routes. Most of that land is still wasteland, after all, and you certainly cannot just dump your guests into the wasteland. So you need to plan out areas that are safe enough and attractive enough — explored factory ruins, city ruins, or battlefield remains out in the wilds. Perhaps you think those ruins have no sightseeing value, but trust me, everything that happened on that land is worth understanding, and the people who travel thousands of miles to Tarronde... what they want to understand is everything behind those ruins.