Integration of Cultural Tourism Lighting with Culture and Technology: Billions of RMB Growth Space for Urban Night Economy

In 2025, driven by both the cultural tourism integration policy and the night economy policy, cultural tourism lighting has become a core engine for activating urban cultural vitality and driving consumption growth. Benchmark projects represented by the Guangzhou International Lighting Festival have attracted over 67 million tourists throughout the year, directly driving the revenue growth of related industries such as catering, accommodation, and retail by more than 30%, demonstrating the strong industrial driving effect of cultural tourism lighting. This form of cultural expression with light as the medium is evolving from simple night scene lighting to an in-depth experience of "cultural translation + technological symbiosis", and has become an important carrier for urban cultural brand building.​
The development of cultural tourism lighting currently presents three major trends: Firstly, the in-depth integration of cultural IP. Lighting installations are no longer simple piles of light and shadow, but transform regional culture, intangible cultural heritage elements, and historical stories into immersive light and shadow narratives through audio-visual and electronic technologies. For example, some cities have created light shows in historical blocks, using ancient buildings as screens and projection technology to reproduce local historical scenes, allowing tourists to experience cultural inheritance through light and shadow. Secondly, the innovative upgrading of interactive experiences. With the help of technologies such as AI and the Internet of Things, real-time interaction between lighting and tourists' behaviors is realized. For instance, a city launched a "light and shadow waterfall" installation, where tourists can control the shape of the water flow and the color of the light through gestures, creating a personalized interactive experience. Thirdly, the technological empowerment of green energy conservation. The application proportion of low-carbon light sources such as LEDs and solar energy exceeds 90%, and the intelligent dimming system automatically adjusts the light intensity according to the ambient brightness and pedestrian flow density, ensuring both the viewing effect and reducing energy consumption by more than 30%.​
From the perspective of market scale, the scale of China's outdoor lighting market is expected to exceed 192.98 billion yuan in 2025, among which cultural tourism lighting accounts for 28%, becoming the fastest-growing segment. At the policy level, many places have issued development plans for the urban night tourism economy, incorporating cultural tourism lighting into key urban infrastructure construction projects, and promoting the implementation of diverse scenarios such as garden night tourism, waterfront lighting, and urban slow traffic system lighting. Industry experts predict that in the next 3-5 years, cultural tourism lighting will sink to the county-level market, and at the same time, deeply integrate with rural revitalization and characteristic town construction, forming a "city + rural" dual-drive development pattern, driving the upstream and downstream industrial chains to achieve billions of yuan in growth, and becoming a new growth pole in the lighting industry.