Tourism boards around the world have woken up to the potential of the prospect of thousands (maybe millions) of Chinese visitors appearing on their doorsteps.
For example, Tourism New Zealand has sensed this opportunity and created a dedicated website that helps New Zealand-based travel brands to serve Chinese tourists/visitors better.
The China Toolkit website has a total of 150 tools in the form of images, videos, documents, and links to other sites.
The site has four sections:
- About China: Talks about the basics about China, its people, culture and how to do business.
- Getting ready: Training the NZ travel brands for Chinese visitors: Language, etiquette, food, internet and social media, and other services.
- Market intelligence: All research information ranging from visitor numbers, forecasting visitors, survey conducted, new China tourism law, etc.
- Information for visitors: Materials that talk about NZ visa requirements, driving in NZ, China payment process in NZ, and others.
A number of the tools direct users to external websites including Tourism New Zealand, China government website, New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Trade, and others.
Also, the New Zealand tourism has created a number of documents that are part of the tool kit, for example: A document on Chinese food habits and how to address them, how to build website content in Chinese language.
Tourism New Zealand's Industry Relations Manager, Paul Yeo, says:
"The site has been developed to consistently evolve and new material and tools will be added in the future to ensure it continues to be a valuable resource for the industry.
"We will also identify what items need to be specifically developed, such as training modules. These will be prioritised to be implemented in 2014."
The China Toolkit website is funded by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and developed by Tourism New Zealand. It went live at the end of November.
Elly Guo, China market development coordinator, illustrates the importance of China to the country by confirming that no other market is being targeted in such a way.
With regards to other potential and lucrative outbound markets such as Russian, she adds:
"Russia is not currently a focus for us as New Zealand receives very few visitors from that market. China on the other hand is now our second largest source of visitors after Australia. We have offices in Shanghai and Guangzhou and will conduct a full range of marketing activities in China."
Related read: How travel industry is changing the famous tagline of made-in-china to made-for-china.
NB:Asian family image via Shutterstock.