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| Chinese tourists (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
According to the latest figures, Chinese went abroad in 2011 more than 70 million times (not including Hong Kong).
But getting Chinese to your country, and letting them spend their money is not that easy. Earlier this month +Simon Young told in the China Weekly Hangout his New Zealand prime minister went to China to see how to get more tourists to their country, and she is not alone. Now they would visit Australia, and add a few days on the other country.
The Schengen countries in Europe (most EU countries with the UK as notable exception) mostly offer multi-country tour packages, and seem to have an advantage for that reason. But despite their high expenditure, most Chinese tourists want the cheaper hotels and prefer an affordable Chinese restaurants, if there is no McDonald's around.
They do spend money on diamonds, luxury goods. For example the Swiss city of Luzern knows the Chinese tourist pass by to buy watches, so a day trip (longer they mostly do not want to stay) focuses on those watches. But many countries are looking for ways to let those tourist stay longer, and spend more.
At this stage about 3% of the Chinese have a passport. Does that mean that 97% is still looking for an opportunity to go abroad, and should the tourist industry focus on them. Or is it more lucrative to focus on the current 3%, who have more to spend than the remainder? Can you use the Chinese internet to get to your potential customers?
Enough issues to discuss on May 30, and to facilitate the participation from Africa (a key destination!), the UK, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, we change our regular broadcasting hours to 10am CEST (Europe), 4pm Beijing Time, 6pm in Sydney and 8pm in Wellington. You can register here for the event.
You can leave your questions and remarks here on this blog or at our event page. During the event, you can watch the discussion on YouTube both here and on our event page. During the event, you can also leave you remarks and questions on Twitter or Google+ (add the hash tag #CWHCWH)
Moderation by +Fons Tuinstra of the +China Speakers Bureau. Panelists will include +Simon Young. Additional participants will be listed here as the event nears.
Below you find the initial planning meeting, where we discussed a range of issues on the agenda for the +China Weekly Hangout .
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