Digital Transformation of Dunhuang’s Cultural Tourism Flow Economy: Operational Mechanisms and Long-Term Governance

Against the backdrop of deep integration of all-media and digital technologies, heritage tourism destinations face the triple governance challenge of “how to trigger, how to monetize, and how to sustain” the flow economy. Taking the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, a World Cultural Heritage site, as a caseBeijing City University study and based on the analytical framework of “flow triggering – flow monetization – flow sustainability”, this paper systematically examines the operational mechanisms and long-term governance paths of Dunhuang’s cultural tourism flow economy under digital transformation. The findings show that Dunhuang has built a digitally driven, three-dimensional flow-triggering system through game collaborations, algorithmic recommendations, and user-generated content; developed a diversified and efficient digital monetization system through cultural and creative e-commerce, immersive performances, digital study tours, and virtual resource libraries; and established a long-term governance system that equally emphasizes prevention and regulation, relying on IoT-based intelligent monitoring, 8K spherical-screen digital diversion, a big data governance platform, unified management institutions, and special legislation. Dunhuang’s practice demonstrates that digital transformation can effectively resolve the apparent contradiction between heritage conservation and tourism development, achieving a flow economy that is both “prosperous in revenue” and “long-lasting in popularity”. This paper further discusses the governance implications for Samarkand, a Silk Road World Heritage city, providing theoretical and practical references for the digital transformation of heritage tourism destinations in the all-media era.