Source: People's Daily Online

http://finance.people.com.cn/n1/2026/0918/c1004-40801303.html

Currently, flexible employment has become an important channel for Chinese workers to increase their income. Against this backdrop, many ordinary people harbor the idea of starting a business to increase their income, but they are often hindered by practical barriers: factors such as high startup costs and a lack of support.

As the consumer market for holistic health continues to heat up, the demand for flexible employment and supplemental income through side hustles among the general public is on the rise. Consequently, "culture and tourism + employment" has emerged as a new direction being explored by numerous industries.

From an industrial perspective, health preservation has evolved into a vast industrial system encompassing multiple sub-sectors such as health food, traditional Chinese medicine health preservation services, health management, health tourism, and a lifestyle centered around health preservation.

The expansion on the demand side is also clearly visible: practical issues such as the need to enhance national health literacy, the increasing number of overweight and obese individuals, sleep disorders, and overwork in the workplace have propelled daily health preservation from being a personal lifestyle choice to becoming a promising industrial trend.

Currently, scenario-based practical teaching, which brings training to the real market, immersive observation and hands-on practice, and learning while observing, has become a new approach for some enterprises to break through the dilemma.

Taking the Sunhope Group as an example, its "Tour the World with Sunhope" global study tour program has been running for 20 years, with a total of 41 stops completed and nearly 70,000 practitioners participating. Different from ordinary sightseeing tours, the study tour program integrates visits to business districts, observation of health care formats, new product training, and operational exchanges, simultaneously launching offline study tours and online live broadcasts.

The implementation of research and learning empowerment cannot be separated from entrepreneurial carriers that are suitable for the general public.

The relevant person in charge of Sunhope also introduced that the micro-entrepreneurship model launched by the group is controllable in investment and has a relatively low threshold, suitable for stay-at-home mothers, side business practitioners, returning entrepreneurs, and owners of transformed physical stores. However, low threshold does not equate to zero risk. The stability of the supply chain, the ability to provide continuous training, and the quality of supporting services directly determine whether entrepreneurs can sustain their operations for a long time. "In the first quarter of 2026, we drove a total of over 11,000 person-times of internal and external employment services through 239 offline business activities nationwide."

Behind model innovation, it is also necessary to rationally examine the boundaries of the industry. Industry experts believe that models such as "cultural tourism and research + individual entrepreneurship" cannot be packaged as tourism benefits, let alone promised as easy ways to make money. The core of measuring its value lies in whether it can impart real skills and help practitioners obtain sustainable income.

The aforementioned person in charge stated that they will continue to optimize the global research and study system and entrepreneurial support mechanism, relying on the foundation of physical industries to build a growth platform for ordinary entrepreneurs and continuously enrich the "culture and tourism + employment" practice. Only by enabling ordinary practitioners to earn a stable income can this empowerment model gain a firm foothold and have broader replication space.