Chinese outbound
tourism source market

ADVANTAGE: TOURISM
Chinese outbound tourism
source market

HATT BSI in cooperation with COTRI China Outbound Tourism Research Institute offers the ADVANTAGE: TOURISM Recovery and Resilience Programme for the successful sustainable restart of the Chinese outbound tourism source market.

The ADVANTAGE: TOURISM Recovery and Resilience Programme provides practical advice and support to prepare for the post-pandemic times: Overcoming the still existing challenges of Climate Change, Overtourism, and Seasonality with a new sustainable approach to re-start working with the Chinese outbound tourism source market, the biggest in the world.

ADVANTAGE: TOURISM supports destinations and service providers in attracting Chinese outbound travellers who are more interested in the local culture and nature by developing focused special interest offers.

* Concentrating on training and empowerment of the local stakeholders instead on spending big amounts on uncontrollable Chinese social media marketing.

* Concentrating on more satisfied Chinese guests, who will turn into ambassadors of the destination and the service provider by recommending them to their peers.

Now is the time to prepare for the next wave of Chinese visitors. Join Turespaña and several other organisations in attracting quality-orientated customers with knowledge-based quality services.

Why now ADVANTAGE: TOURISM?

NOW is the time to prepare for the new wave of Chinese outbound travellers. Almost 70% of Chinese are eager to travel internationally again as soon as visa and air connections become available again and it is perceived to be safe to travel again.

Chinese gained in 2020 much more information after one year of looking at videos from different places.

The competition will be strong, as especially in the beginning airlines, hotels etc. will give provide attractive offers around the world to attract customers to get back into the business.

Challenges

  • The pre-pandemic situation of overtourism, high levels of seasonality, low margins and less than satisfied guests, staff members and locals in the host destinations needs to be replaced by a sustainable approach
  • The level of demand is increasing. Different segments of the Chinese outbound source market expect products and services adapted to their specific needs and interests
  • Paid-for social media messages are losing their appeal for Chinese visitors who look for authentic recommendations by their peers instead of advertisements by celebrities
  • The decline of package tour group travel makes it necessary to establish new distribution channels

Benefits of being prepared

  • Satisfied Chinese visitors, spending more money, visiting more different places at more different times of the year, recommending destinations and services to their peers based on carefully adapted and digitalised products
  • The advantage over competing destinations by being better prepared for the new post-CoViD-19 wave of Chinese outbound travellers
  • Satisfied tourism service providers, able to provide full-time employments and realising sustainable margins
  • Satisfied staff members, welcoming Chinese visitors
  • Satisfied local inhabitants, having meaningful interactions with Chinese visitors
  • Satisfied governments, creating jobs and increasing tax income
  • Satisfactory usage of local environmental resources

Who is offering ADVANTAGE TOURISM?

Project Leader
COTRI COTRI’s Founder and CEO Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Georg Arlt FRGS FRAS
Project Associates
Landways International CEO Gazmend Haxhia  Leading Tour operator for Chinese visitors in Southeast Europe
Stocastic.World CEO Dr. Rudy Snippe Supporting innovation and value production
Trend Transfer CEO Richard Adam Mandated for destination development in all aspects, from greenfield or restructuring strategy to viable visitor experience and sustainable business
Project Technology Partners
PLANET Pascal Beij, Managing Director Germany Leading Fintech company for mobile payment and VAT refund
TCI Research Hayden Huang, Sales Director Provider of WeChat, Mini Programmes and Cloud technology solutions
Tencent Cloud Europe CEO Olivier Henry-Biabaud Data Setting standards in travel data-based competitive intelligence

How does ADVANTAGE: TOURISM work?

SIX MODULES

ADVANTAGE: TOURISM provides a full-service approach to re-start Chinese outbound tourism in a successful and sustainable way.

It is built in a modular way, which allows projects to be of a duration of just a few months or several years, of providing trainings, insights and recommendation, but if wished-for also all steps of implementation, counselling and permanent improvement.

After each step, the decision to continue or to terminate the project is possible.

The experiences of ADVANTAGE: TOURISM in working with the Chinese market can be used to use similar tools for other, especially Asian, source markets.

As standard products, three versions are offered, other configurations are also possible.

ADVANTAGE: TOURISM Pilot:                                            Modules 1+2 – Foundation-laying programme

One year ADVANTAGE: TOURISM program:                     Modules 1-5 – Development and implementation programme

Stabilization ADVANTAGE: TOURISM program:               Module 6 – Further improvement, possible translation for other markets

MODULE 1

Kick-off workshop with government and private stakeholders:

  • Elaborating scope of the project
  • Initial status assessment
  • Priorities and objectives
  • Development and implementation roadmap

Analysis of the situation of work with Chinese outbound tourism source market:

  • in the destination before and during CoViD-19 as part of overall development
  • existing brand image
  • previous activities and results

MODULE 2

  • Audit
  • Data gathering and analysis Supply and Demand
  • Identification of promising market segments
  • Matching of existing services and services to be adapted or created
  • Identification of opportunities and needs for digitalisation
  • Provision of Online Training Programmes
  • Report of results Modules 1&2
  • Workshop

MODULE 3

  • Establishment of organizational structures (with local substructures according to size of destination) “China Tourism Task Force” for interested stakeholders
  • Provision of further online and offline training programmes
  • Start of development / restart of government and non-governmental relations with Chinese market (city partnerships, art/music festivals, university cooperation etc.)
  • Start of development and implementation of digitalisation incl. mobile payment systems, APPs etc.
  • Support Product Adaptation Examples
  • Development of Value-based qualitative KPIs

MODULE 4

  • Task Force implementation as Knowledge Node
  • Development of storytelling, recommendation marketing structures, additional distribution channels Further product development and adaptation and evaluation of adaptation
  • Cluster development
  • Establishment of data provision for new KPIs
  • Establishment of permanent Measurement of sentiment for Chinese visitors, staff members and local population

MODULE 5

Sub-region and project region conferences:

  • Evaluation of the first year in terms of quantitative and qualitative KPIs
  • Improvement and enlargement of services and networks
  • Project synchronization towards a masterplan
  • If continued: Strategy fine-tuning for second/following year
  • Defining tasks, responsibilities, financial regulations and timelines of implementation for Module 6

MODULE 6

  • Second/following year
  • Further implementation
  • Regular feedback loops
  • Counselling
  • spin-offs
  • translation experiences for other source markets

Who is using ADVANTAGE: TOURISM?

 

Starting in 2020, COTRI is supporting Turespaña in re-starting the Chinese Outbound tourism market. The first pilot ADVANTAGE: TOURISM project started in February 2021

What is the background of ADVANTAGE: TOURISM?

Advancing tourism after CoViD-19 needs to find answers to the challenges which already existed before: Climate Change, Overtourism, Seasonality, quantitative growth without sufficient management, concentration on marketing instead of hospitality and quality. Advancing tourism after CoViD-19 needs to add qualitative Key Performance Indicators to quantitative KPIs and to offer better-adapted services for different market segments to thrive in the new tourism market of the 2020s. Advancing tourism based on satisfaction offers recommendation marketing through satisfied customers. Peer recommendations for successfully adapted offers are the strongest tool to start a constant stream of customers from China.

Satisfaction as key element requires embeddedness, the feeling of being truly welcome, requires detailed knowledge about the demand side and consequently the development and adaptation of products.

Satisfaction initiates recommendation to peers. This is especially important in China, as marketing and advertisements are perceived as propaganda and KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) command less trust than in earlier times, as they are perceived as being paid for their recommendations. KOCs (Key Opinion Customers) are the more successful new tool to support recommending to peers, via WeChat, live streaming or short videos. Satisfaction resulting in recommendation means that less budget is needed to pay for Chinese agencies doing Social Media marketing in China with little measurable result. Instead, money can be spent on the empowerment of the local tourism industry through trainings and support of product adaptation and digitalisation.

 

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