Chapter 663 - 295: Homestay Development, Dragon Palace, and Surfing Influencers

A few days later, Li Younan boarded the plane bound for Hainan.

Liu Li and Jing Chaoyi didn’t go with him. Compared to diving in Hainan and taking photos of who knows what, they were more excited about going to Li Younan’s alma mater to study.

For Liu Li, being able to skip the college entrance exam and go directly to university was really a great thing.

To help Liu Li achieve this dream, Jing Chaoyi also helped her with tutoring for quite some time. Of course, in the end, it was thanks to Li Younan’s connections that Liu Li was able to get in.

Li Younan and Jing Chaoyi currently had the mindset to let Liu Li first experience the atmosphere of university, so they didn’t plan to let her take some of the more professional courses, especially in the science and engineering fields, which are not only boring but also require a high level of systematic knowledge, hard to learn if one is not truly passionate.

However, in such a comprehensive university, there are some courses that even without any foundation can be interesting to attend, such as selected courses in Marxist philosophy or psychology.

Moreover, as a top domestic university, some humanities and social sciences professors occasionally come to give lectures at the school. Even if you just sit in these courses, you can learn quite a bit.

This knowledge may not significantly enhance professional skills but can broaden one’s horizons and improve cognitive abilities.

Of course, at present Jing Chaoyi and Liu Li still couldn’t immediately take action on this because as soon as Li Younan transformed the guesthouse into his photography exhibition venue, the number of visitors skyrocketed.

The originally small guesthouse that received one or two guests a day suddenly got fully booked.

Liu Li and Jing Chaoyi saw the bookings were directly full until next month, which was truly astonishing.

Jing Chaoyi said to Li Younan speechlessly: "Senior, this is too exaggerated."

But the happiest one was Liu Li.

She not only helped Jing Chaoyi clean the rooms but also came up with a new money-making strategy, which was to charge an exhibition entrance fee.

Because photographers who couldn’t book a room would choose to stay in other nearby guesthouses and then politely inquire if they could visit.

Originally, Jing Chaoyi didn’t mind, but Liu Li’s eyes darted around, and she greeted the guests ahead of Jing Chaoyi, saying: "You can visit, but you need to pay for the ticket."

When asked how much, Liu Li thought for a moment and charged an additional 50% of their room fee.

Jing Chaoyi was dumbfounded, thinking it was too outrageous.

But unexpectedly, the photographers drawn to the fame agreed without a blink.

In this way, their main business became... exhibition visiting.

If guests booked rooms, the exhibition viewing fees were waived.

This incident also made Jing Chaoyi better understand the saying: Any niche matter can become popular in China due to the large population base.

Take photography for instance; true veteran photographers, not those who charge for photos at tourist spots, are supposed to be very niche. After all, they need to have high aesthetics, research and study skills, and sufficient time, energy, and money to afford such expensive equipment.

But in China, this group amounts to at least several hundred thousand if not a million.

And those who like to carry cameras without photography skills are even more.

Again, niche becomes popular.

As one batch of photographers after another visited Li Younan’s photography exhibition venue, being amazed, and then praised and recommended it in their respective circles, this themed "All-round Traveler" photography exhibition guesthouse crazily spread like a virus in the professional photography community.

It vaguely became a must-visit photography exhibition for some photographers, its fame even spread abroad.

Next, how Li Younan’s status in the photography world would change, even Jing Chaoyi and Liu Li couldn’t predict.

One thing was for sure: every visitor there was invariably shocked by the hundreds of top-notch photographs.

To further facilitate the viewing of Li Younan’s photography works, Jing Chaoyi also reorganized the layout of the photography works, rearranging them according to the places Li Younan visited and their nature.

However, the immediate issue that followed was that the two of them were completely understaffed.

Previously, although they had only a handful of guests staying, earning not much, they were indeed idle; now, from the moment they opened their eyes in the morning, they needed to busy themselves until night.

Thus, Jing Chaoyi and Liu Li, who had never worked at such a high intensity before, were exhausted after just a few days.

Hiring two more people became urgent.

Their plan was simple, to find local ladies and receptionists mainly for cleaning purposes.

Fortunately, the photographers drawn to the fame were of fairly good quality, so their rooms weren’t too hard to clean.

Since the guesthouse had just gotten busy, many things were unorganized and chaotic, requiring one-by-one sorting out.

Once everything was sorted, people could relax, but until then, Jing Chaoyi and Liu Li temporarily couldn’t go to university.

Meanwhile, Li Younan had already arrived in Hainan.

Li Younan arrived in Hainan alongside Chen Chong.

They didn’t go to bustling Sanya, nor did they visit the recently high-profile Wanning.