Scenic spot NPCs, a highly lucrative money-making business that relies on "actor consumables"

The news that film and television actors Shi Yuanting, Zhang Hengrui, Chen Ming and others joined scenic spots as NPCs has recently gone viral across the internet.

Many people wonder, is being an NPC at a scenic spot a really profitable business? The earnings of actors serving as NPCs vary from person to person and depend on their popularity. But for scenic spots, relying on these endless influx of "consumables", scenic spot NPC operation is indeed a real high-margin business.

01

In the past few years, there have been many successful cases of scenic spots that gained both fame and fortune by hyping scenic spot NPCs.

Some scenic spots became an instant hit thanks to their NPCs.

Earlier this year, the little-known Taiyuan Ancient County Scenic Area rose to fame overnight with its peddler NPC.

This peddler NPC wears a tiger-head hat, carries a small goods pole on his shoulder, and looks almost identical to Logger Vick from the animated series *Boonie Bears*. His antics of wandering through streets and alleys, yelling and playing tricks are so amusing that he went viral on social media, causing a sharp surge in passenger flow to the Taiyuan Ancient County Scenic Area where he works. In just 9 days from March 14 to 22, when the peddler NPC returned for performances, the scenic spot attracted nearly 200,000 visitors in total. On March 15 alone, it received more than 20,000 tourists, a year-on-year surge of 170.5%, and over 8,000 of those visitors were drawn specifically during the peddler's performance slot.

In July this year, the low-profile Tonglu Chuitongtian River · OMG Heartbeat Paradise Scenic Area became a hit with its Kame-Sen'nin NPC.

This Kame-Sen'nin NPC wears white clothes, has a long beard and an ethereal, otherworldly demeanor. The funniest part is that he squats on the only way for sightseeing boats on the underground karst river of the scenic spot, speaks with a "heavenly reverb" tone, and his line "welcome to tongtian river" makes tourists burst into laughter. He can also switch seamlessly between Chinese, English and Russian, improvise responses to jokes, make humorous remarks and interact with visitors in real time, making everyone laugh heartily, and soon became a viral sensation.

The sudden popularity of the Kame-Sen'nin NPC made Tonglu Chuitongtian River · OMG Heartbeat Paradise Scenic Area famous overnight, and its passenger flow rose sharply afterwards, exceeding 10,000 visitors per day at peak times, with the number of night tour visitors surging to 600 to 700.

Some scenic spots have made huge profits from NPC operations.

The most typical case is Kaifeng Wansuishan Wuxia City Scenic Area, which has more than 3,000 performers in total, including over 1,500 full-time NPCs, covering a host of high-popularity NPCs such as "Matchmaker Wang's Dating Show", "Fat Doctor", "Top Scholar", "Old Sister" and "Dragon King".

In 2022, the total revenue of Wansuishan Wuxia City Scenic Area was only over 80 million yuan, and it was almost unknown across the country. Who could have imagined that with the NPC strategy, the total comprehensive revenue of the scenic spot soared to 1.27 billion yuan in 2025; in the first half of 2026, its comprehensive revenue has reached 940 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of more than 50%.

Interestingly, the real high-profit point of the scenic spot NPC business is not just gaining both fame and wealth, but completely subverting the traditional profit logic of the scenic spot industry.

In the past, the relationship between tourists and scenic spots was a simple buy-sell one: one pays for the tour, the other provides services in return.

Nowadays, the moment tourists step into the scenic area, they are no longer ordinary visitors, but paying users plus part-time actors.

When they take photos, play games and interact with NPCs, they will definitely post photos or videos on social media. With the expansion of the tourist base, these contents spread rapidly across social media at a geometric rate, attracting more tourists to come, and the cycle repeats. The scenic spot does not spend a penny on promotion, but instead lets tourists pay to complete content creation, social fission and secondary consumption all by themselves.

The best business model is always to let consumers work for the enterprise willingly and happily.

From this perspective, scenic spot NPCs are simply a super high-efficiency money printer.

Many scenic spots see their peers making a lot of money from NPCs, and can't help wanting to give it a try. It's nothing more than finding a bunch of NPCs to interact with tourists, which they think is easy. Full-time or part-time, just recruit more people, then dig out a viral NPC from them, and they can make huge profits with a small investment.

Since the beginning of this year, recruitment advertisements for scenic spot NPCs have been as numerous as snowflakes, and news about scenic spots offering high salaries to recruit special-shaped NPCs or even "weird" NPCs can be seen everywhere.

If scenic spots think in this way, they are far too naive.

02

The essence of the scenic spot NPC business is never making money by relying on "NPC individuals", but making money by relying on a complete "NPC system".

The former means that the scenic spot puts all its focus on the "actors" who play the NPCs, and the operating performance of the scenic spot is directly tied to these actors. If the scenic spot cannot cultivate a viral NPC, its business cannot thrive. If it cultivates a viral NPC but cannot firmly control the NPC, once the NPC quits or jumps to another platform, the business of the scenic spot will collapse instantly.

The latter means that the scenic spot puts its focus on a sophisticated "NPC system". In this system, the scenic spot is the operator, the system covers the whole process, NPCs are profit-making tools that run efficiently in the system, and the actors who play NPCs are consumables that continuously enter the system and are constantly consumed and replaced.

Harsh as it sounds, the fact is this cruel.

The English abbreviation NPC has explained everything — Non-Player Character.

An NPC is just a character in a huge story script written by the scenic spot, but the story itself is not written by the NPC, let alone dominated by the actor behind the NPC.

In addition, scenic spot NPCs have a "shelf life", ranging from a few months at the shortest to several years at the longest.

The success of a scenic spot NPC depends on its distinct personal traits and performance characteristics. In order to stand out from the fierce competition to the greatest extent, the actor playing the NPC must go all in, devote everything they have, and push the character traits of the NPC and their own performance characteristics to the extreme.

The benefit brought by this level of extremity is that the scenic spot NPC has "extremely high recognition" in the current internet ecosystem, making it easier to get traffic support from platforms. But this extremity is also a double-edged sword.

As a scenic spot NPC, your success comes from extremity, and your failure also comes from extremity.

The essence of an NPC's viral popularity is that it highly fits a certain aesthetic preference or emotion of tourists in a specific period of time. But in this era, the aesthetic preference and emotion of tourists are changing rapidly.

This determines that once a newer, funnier and more interesting NPC appears, or the popular trend shifts, the character of the original NPC will lose its popularity instantly.

Therefore, what scenic spots need to cultivate is never just one or two individual NPCs, but a complete NPC system.

Scenic spots should take charge of core links including writing NPC scripts, developing NPC roles, researching NPC interaction modes, testing NPC linkage effects, and opening up NPC monetization channels, so as to finally realize the closed-loop operation of the scenic spot NPC system.

In this process, the actors playing NPCs are the "consumables" that the scenic spot needs to continuously feed into the NPC system. After these "consumables" enter the system, more than half of them will be eliminated directly, most of them will become tool-type NPCs, and very few will have the chance to stand out. During this period, the dual iteration of NPC roles and actors happens more frequently, and this process goes round and round, so as to ensure that the scenic spot can always have fresh NPCs available.

Some people may refute at this point that the NPCs of Disney and Universal Studios have long-lasting popularity, why do the NPCs in Chinese scenic spots have to have such a short life cycle? That's because the NPCs of Disney and Universal Studios are supported by strong IPs, backed by decades of continuous iteration of massive IP content from animations, films and comics, as well as continuous huge capital investment.

Which domestic scenic spot NPC nowadays can achieve that? The current market logic determines that domestic scenic spot NPCs can only be fast-moving consumer goods, not long-lasting IP products.

Therefore, actors who play scenic spot NPCs should have a clear understanding of their own positioning as "consumables". Don't tie yourself too closely to the NPC role, and think that it is you who have made the scenic spot a hit, and that you are the core competitiveness of the scenic spot. This is a typical mistake of taking the platform's capabilities as your own personal capabilities.

Film and television actors actually have the clearest understanding in this regard. Actors like Ma Jingtao, Zheng Guolin, Kou Zhenhai, who were all popular stars in their prime, are willing to play scenic spot NPCs now, no more than accelerating the conversion of their remaining star popularity into real cash in hand.

03

How long can this high-margin scenic spot NPC business continue to be popular?

At least in the next one or two years, it will still be in the golden window period, with three obvious signs.

First, the film and television industry is accelerating the delivery of high-quality consumables to scenic spot NPCs. From former big names such as Ma Jingtao, Zheng Guolin and Kou Zhenhai, to small supporting actors like Zhang Hengrui, Shi Yuanting and Chen Ming, these professionally trained professionals with solid lines skills, performance experience, the ability to improvise, and their own fan bases, are pouring into the scenic spot NPC system at a salary level far below the market average.

It is said that Zheng Guolin's monthly income at the scenic spot is just over 20,000 yuan, and that is the money he earns by working very hard at the scenic spot. More actors will continue to join in, especially the participation of well-known actors and stars, which will keep scenic spot NPCs in the spotlight.

Second, tourists are still highly interested, and their tolerance for scenic spot NPCs is far from reaching the peak. The author of Travel Power once expressed concern in previous articles that scenic spot NPCs are becoming too ubiquitous. But surprisingly, many people in the comment section said that they have not lost interest in scenic spot NPCs yet, and are even full of expectations that scenic spots can introduce more NPCs.

One reader commented that rather than letting the half-dead ancient town in the local area fall into disuse, it is better to introduce some NPCs to create more interactive experiences, at least providing a place for local residents to kill time after meals. As for whether the performance of scenic spot NPCs is good or bad, it does not actually matter. At this stage, everyone just wants to have fun, and that's enough.

It is not difficult to find that the rigid demand of tourists for scenic spot NPCs still exists, and the earlier a scenic spot enters this track, the earlier it can get a share of the dividends.

Third, the algorithm support from social media platforms is at its peak. After counting various platform conferences attended in the first half of the year, the author found that scenic spot NPCs are still the priority targets for traffic support from all major platforms. According to this year's traffic support policies of various platforms, as long as a scenic spot vigorously develops NPC operations and encourages tourists to publish NPC-related UGC content on the platforms, it can easily get traffic exposure from the platforms.

This is fully proved by the fact that the speed of scenic spot NPCs going viral has accelerated this year. The peddler of Taiyuan Ancient County Scenic Area, the Kame-Sen'nin of Tonglu Chuitongtian River · OMG Heartbeat Paradise Scenic Area, and the Fat Doctor of Wansuishan Wuxia City are all new viral scenic spot NPCs that emerged this year.

But don't be overjoyed too early. The trend of scenic spot NPCs can shift very quickly, and the author has noticed some unusual signs recently.

On the one hand, the homogenization of scenic spot NPCs is accelerating. Especially after the Li Bai NPC at Hetou Old Street became a hit, almost every scenic spot is equipped with NPCs of famous poets such as Li Bai, Du Fu and Bai Juyi, leading to a trend of excess.

On the other hand, the tendency of scenic spot NPCs to be vulgar is obvious. Especially after the incident that the "Little Yellow Fish" NPC at Gexian Village Scenic Area fed a lollipop to a female tourist with his mouth was exposed, more scenic spots seem to have suddenly found a way to get traffic, making unscrupulous edge-pushing content, which has attracted close attention from regulators.

In addition, the Matthew effect in the scenic spot NPC field is becoming more and more prominent. Kaifeng Wansuishan Wuxia City, Hangzhou Songcheng, Millennium City Park and other scenic spots have become the absolute leaders in the scenic spot NPC field, with a leading position far ahead of others in both the quantity and quality of NPCs. In contrast, small and medium-sized scenic spots, even if they also vigorously develop NPC operations, can hardly form differentiated features, let alone cultivate a viral NPC.

To put it plainly, the threshold of the scenic spot NPC market is getting higher and higher, and industry profits are rapidly concentrated to the top players. Small and medium-sized scenic spots can hardly even get a tiny share of the benefits, let alone make big money.

Scenic spot NPC is a natural traffic outlet.

When the wind is blowing, even pigs can fly. When the wind weakens, only pigs with wings can continue to fly.

Scenic spots should judge the stage and opportunities of entering the NPC field according to their own situation and market changes, and make correct layouts. In particular, they should take advantage of the current golden window period to build their own NPC system, and accumulate enough "consumables" for future needs.

Actors who play scenic spot NPCs are also looking for new opportunities in practice. The "Snow Cake Monkey" NPC from Changchun Zoological and Botanical Park even appeared on the hit variety show *Beyond the Edge* earlier this year, showing signs of marching into the film and television industry, which is a good path for career transition.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Travel Power", author: Chen Jie tigereat, published with authorization from 36Kr.