11^th April 2014

Heide

Germany

CTW Chinese Tourist Welcome Awards 2014 showcase best practice examples

15 best ways to welcome Chinese outbound travellers

China is the biggest outbound tourism source market in the world with more than 100 billion US$ spent by 97 million travellers in 2013. How to attract this major market segment and how to turn Chinese visitors into satisfied customers who recommend destinations and tourism service providers to their friends and colleagues? COTRI China Outbound Tourism Research Institute presented 15 answers to this important question in the form of 15 CTW Chinese Tourist Welcome Awards.

Already for the 11th time CTW Awards were given during the COTTM China Outbound Travel and Tourism Market in Beijing, the most important outbound fair for the Chinese market, organized by Tarsus Co. (London).

Fair visitors and officials including the Minister of Tourism of Jamaica and several ambassadors witnessed presentations by the CTW Award winners, some of whom had travelled a long way to Beijing especially for the ceremony.

The international jury in 2014 had to evaluate more applications than ever before, reflecting the growing interest in the Chinese market. The selected gold, silver and bronze CTW Awards were given to private companies and governmental institutions from all continents and from all segments of the industry including also retailers and publishers.

As every year, CTW Awards were given in five categories: Product Innovation, Internet/Media, Service Quality, Marketing, and Overall Performance.

“Chinese tourists travel to ever more diverse destinations and look increasingly for experience instead of sightseeing. This is also reflected in the variety of the CTW Award winners in 2014, which feature ICT solutions as well as specialised duty free companies, luxury hotel groups etc. as well as destinations which are not requiring anymore a visa from their Chinese visitors. The 11th anniversary of the CTW Award clearly showed the strength of the development and the optimism of the market.” said Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Georg Arlt, director of COTRI, who chaired the CTW Award ceremony.

COTRI China Outbound Tourism Research Institute is the world’s leading independent research institute for information, training, quality assessment, research, and consulting relating to the Chinese outbound tourism market.

Further information can be found on www.china-outbound.com.

Full list of winners can be found bellow.

COTRI China Outbound Tourism Research Institute, desk1@china-outbound.com

Tel. +49 481 8555 523, www.china-outbound.com

Chinese Tourist Welcome Award Winners 2014

1.)    Product  Innovation:

RoomsXML – Bronze

Ceres -Silver

Eurail.com – Gold

2.)    Service Quality

Chang you ao zhou 畅游澳洲 – Bronze

Innova  TaxFree Group – Silver

Lux* Resorts –Gold

3.)    Marketing

Sharjah Commerce & Tourism Development Authority – Bronze

WorldDutyFree Group – Silver

Jili tour 吉利游 –Gold

4.)    Internet/ Media

Rwanda Development Board – Bronze

Maldives marketing and public relations corporation- Silver

GBTimes- Gold

5.)    Overall Performance

Gibraltar Tourist Board – Bronze

Gebr. Heinemann SE & Co. KG –Silver

Jamaica Tourist Board – Gold

By Nick Rhines

VisitBritain is introducing a major new programme aimed at increasing the number of high spending Chinese visitors that are already estimated to bring up to £1.2 billion annually to the UK economy.

VisitBritain has created a comprehensive modular visitor preparation and marketing scheme, The GREAT China Welcome Chartermark. It allows hotels, restaurants, visitor attractions and other tourist facing companies access to a comprehensive suite of services that will enable them to target and fully prepare to serve what is the largest high spending consumer group the World has ever known.

Under the scheme, the leading specialist Chinese advisors and agencies are taking part in supporting the industry in the preparation for, and targeting of Chinese tourists. This includes cultural training for non-Mandarin speaking staff, Mandarin web and digital marketing specifically tailored to attract the Chinese audience, translation services and point of sale advice. These include ChinaContact, Qumin, China Edge and COTRI.

Qualification for the Charter is based passing one criteria that demonstrates evidence, or future plans to introduce an initiative to welcome Chinese tourists.

The Charter website includes a practical web based self-assessment service that identifies key tasks that need to be addressed based on specific need. An online form is completed and the resulting assessment can be used to identify weaknesses in marketing to and serving Chinese tourists, and which advisors within the Chartermark consultancy network should be utilised. The assessment tool will also be valuable to gauge progress following a company’s investment in the Chinese market.

The assessment service was designed and built by China market entry specialists ChinaContact and Anglo Chinese digital marketing company Qumin.

ChinaContact believes that part of the problem of attracting and maintaining a large volume of high spending Chinese customers is that business managers are unsure of where to start and who to turn to for assistance. The Chartermark scheme overcomes that problem.

‘Managers in the hospitality sector know where to begin when trying to generate business from nearly every consumer group, but with the Chinese tourist market there is not the required knowledge to choose a web design or social media agency, or to run a Chinese focused customer service programme’, says ChinaContact managing director, Roy Graff.

‘What VisitBritain has done is not only bring the best Chinese market advisors and service companies together under one banner, it has created a platform and resource centre that can be accessed with high levels of assurance. What is more, the self-service assessment tool is thorough, and allows users to identify what they need to address to sell effectively to Chinese visitors, keep them as customers of the future, and create word of mouth sales.’

The success of The GREAT China Welcome Chartermark can already be judged by the more than 100 companies that signed up and qualified for the standard mark even before launch. They included British Airways, Edwardian Hotel Group, Harrods, Fortnum & Mason and Pullman London St Pancras, as well as many smaller hotels, visitor attractions and tour operators.

Ends

About ChinaContact:

ChinaContact is a China market entry specialist for the tourism, retail and luxury sectors working with destinations, operators, brands, hospitality providers, media and events. ChinaContact can advise on trade distribution and marketing in China through the travel trade and consumer travel media and can develop marketing campaigns. It offers representation services at China and Asia trade shows including COTTM, ILTM-Asia, ITB-Asia and more.

www.chinacontact.co.uk

About Qumin Limited:

Qumin is the only full service Anglo-Chinese Digital Marketing company. With offices in London and Shanghai, it provides a complete menu of  digital and e-commerce services for all Chinese speaking markets.

Qumin provides in-depth expertise in:

• Strategic planning
• Website and app creative and technical design and development
• Website registration in China
• Search engine optimisation (SEO)
• Social media marketing
• Pay per click advertising (PPC)
• Mandarin copywriting and translation
• Digital Brand Launch in China
• Complete e-commerce service, including payment gateway and order fulfilment

www.qumin.co.uk

Link to VisitBritain charter website: http://www.visitbritain.org/greatchinawelcome/

Influence of new tourism law felt in Chinese outbound tourism

Destinations see more self-organised travellers replacing package tour groups

26^th November, 2013

Heide

Germany

Destinations around the world have reported lower arrival numbers for Chinese visitors in the weeks following the introduction of the new Chinese tourism law. Many Chinese outbound tour operators raised their prices especially for their cheapest products as once again they have to pay their tour guides.

The new Chinese tourism law, which came into effect on October 1^st, 2013, rules out the common practices of forced shopping or involuntary payments for activities outside fixed itineraries for Chinese package tours. Under this business model, tour operators would not only save on the cost of paying tour guides but would often even receive money from the tour guides for the right to earn commissions from the tourists’ shopping and sightseeing.

Taiwan reported only two third of last year’s number of arrivals for the month of October 2013, but already saw a return to normalcy in the first half of November. New Zealand registered a decrease of monthly arrival numbers from China for the first time in since 2010. The 12% blow was however softened by the fact that the average length of stay increased at the same time. South Korea also suffered a setback of about 20% during the Golden Week period, the first week of October, for which it blamed the new Chinese tourism law. In July the South Korean capital Seoul has however already introduced a certification programme for inbound tour programmes to shield Chinese visitors from fraudulent practices such as forced shopping.

In all three destinations the tourism officials recognised that the decrease in package tour arrivals was partly compensated by increases in self-organised travellers, who on average spend more and stay longer in the country.

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Georg Arlt, editor of the C.O.M.I. China Outbound Market Intelligence magazine, sees his analysis vindicated. He says:

“In the current issue of C.O.M.I. we argue that higher prices for organised tours will reduce the price difference between a package tour and a self-organised trip, increasing the appeal for Chinese outbound travelers to venture outside of their neighbourhood on their own. The tourism law will therefore bolster the already growing segment of the self-organised travellers and will also make this kind of travel organisation more attractive for less affluent travelers. The first experiences of the new tourism law point to this trend.”

Prof. Dr. Arlt however also mentioned that the market for cheap outbound trips has not disappeared. “There is a long queue of Chinese who want to spend as little money as possible to be able to say after the trip that they also have been abroad. They do not mind much about the quality of the trip and they certainly want to do some shopping on the way.”

So with customers complaining about higher prices and tour guides reported to be ignoring even the most explicit wishes of tour members to visit shopping centres, the brouhaha about the new regulations is likely to die down in the coming months and to be supplanted by new ways of catering both for the growing self-organised travel market and the price-sensitive package group tourists from China.

C.O.M.I. China Outbound Market Intelligence magazine is a quarterly online publication of COTRI China Outbound Tourism Research Institute. C.O.M.I. provides in-depth market intelligence, insights and background information about current and future developments of the Chinese outbound tourism market.

Press contact:

COTRI China Outbound Tourism Research Institute, desk1@china-outbound.com

Tel. +49 481 8555 523, www.china-outbound.com

In order to recognise the rising importance of the Chinese tourist market to the UK and most other global destinations, China Edge has partnered with COTRI (China Outbound Tourism Research Institute) to host a China outbound tourism networking reception on 6 November at 7 pm. The reception will be held at the Radisson Blu Edwardian Hotel on the same day as the China Edge morning workshop on China’s tourism industry and immediately following the COTRI workshop at World Travel Market.

The reception is open to tourism, hospitality and retail professionals that are interested to learn more about the new trend of Independent Chinese travellers and how to engage with them. Meet with like minded professionals from the industry and hear China Edge Founding Director Roy Graff and COTRI CEO Prof. Wolfgang Georg Arlt give brief overviews about the changing landscape and the move from group travel to independent travel in China.

Register here for free

Keynote Speakers:

Roy Graff, China Egde Director and China Tourism Industry Veteran;
Jeremy Gordon, China Edge Director , Business Strategy;
Yu Sun, China Edge Director, Cross-Cultural Training;
Arnold Ma, China Edge Director, Digital Marketing;
Michaela Christine Wolf, Luxury Marketing Consultant.

(link to original article in Chinese)