It is reported that Hangzhou currently has 461 travel agencies but only a few of those are of large scale and famous brands.

Xu Liang, the general manager and director of CITS Zhejiang and the former general manager of Zhejiang Paradise International Travel Service, told media that with the unique resources of CITS Head Office and the outstanding management, research and development, and tour guide team from Paradise International Travel Service, CITS Zhejiang will focus more on outbound tourism, MICE and e-commerce.

CITS Head Office is reported to be China’s largest travel agency and has 14 branches in more than ten countries and regions with a total brand value of CNY13.9 billion.

Source: China Hospitality News (March 18, 2010)

China International Travel Service Enters Hangzhou is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

In this first post of a series, we outline the most popular social network sites in China. In follow-up posts, we’ll look at Twitter clones, online video, and censorship. This series is based on a discussion I had with Kaiser Kuo, a Beijing-based expert on China’s Internet.

Kaiser Kuo is a Chinese-American who lives in Beijing. He currently works for one of China’s leading online video services, Youku.com, as a consultant on International Business. Previously he was Group Director, Digital Strategy at Ogilvy & Mather China.

There are 3 social networking sites that are clearly in the lead in China, according to Kaiser Kuo.

Renren.com is the leading social network. It began as a Facebook clone called Xiaonei.com – which means ‘on campus’ in Chinese. In August 2009 it changed its name to Renren, which means ‘everybody.’ Renren had 70 million registered users at that point. The site is owned by Oak Pacific Interactive and has had over $400M pumped into it by investors Softbank.

The site was founded in December 2005, shortly after Facebook began to ramp up. Its founder Wang Xing later founded Fanfou, a popular Twitter clone (see our next post in this series).

Xiaonei.com was literally a Facebook clone when it started, sporting the same shade of blue and the same layout. ReadWriteWeb guest writer Gang Lu wrote on this blog in June 2008 that Xiaonei.com “was like a simplified version of Facebook in Chinese when it was first launched.” He noted that it had “the same layout, same color scheme and even a very similar logo,” which he said “made people wonder if there was an official connection with Facebook.”

Kaixin001.com is another very popular social network. Kaiser said that its users are mostly “white collar middle class” and typically come from a “first tier city.”

Kaiser noted that Kaixin001.com is extremely popular among people who work for multinational companies, ad agencies and other white collar companies. Accordingly, the site is valuable because of its relatively wealthy user base.

The third social network that is very popular in China is 51.com, which Kaiser said is mostly used by people who live in “lower tier cities” and even rural areas. He noted that it has a “lower brow offering.”

Each of these three hugely popular social networks in China has its own niche; from the mainstream Renren, to the more prestigious Kaixin001, to the populist 51.com.

Source: ReadWriteWeb (March 13, 2010)

China’s Top 3 Social Network Sites is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

Ctrip.com said that, from March 10, 2010, all the room rates it provides on its website for hotels in China will be the lowest available. If any consumers find room rates lower than those on its website, it will pay them compensation to the value of three times the price difference.

This is the first time ever that a travel service provider in China has promised to compensate consumers for price differences.

China’s online travel business has been growing rapidly in recent years. In 2009, the total number of online travel service users in China reached 30.24 million, an increase of 77.9%. Meanwhile the number of online travel service providers was also on the increase, making the market competition even fiercer. It is widely believed that Ctrip.com is offering this new policy to retain users in the face of intense competition.

Source: China CSR (March 15, 2010)

China’s Ctrip.com Promises To Never Be Undersold is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

Chinese government information authorities warned some of Google’s biggest Web partners on Friday that they should prepare backup plans in case Google ceases censoring the results of searches on its local Chinese-language search engine, said the expert, who did not want to be identified for fear of retaliation by the government.

The warning was the latest indication that two months of negotiations between Chinese officials and Google over government censorship have reached an impasse. The two sides have been at a standoff since Google announced in January that it planned to stop self-censoring the results of searches on its Chinese site, google.cn, in reaction to what it described as China-based cyber-attacks on its databases and e-mail accounts.

The warning was intended to head off a wave of frustrated users should their internet searches be stymied because of Google’s conflict with the government. Google controls nearly 30 of China’s Internet search market.

China’s most popular Web portal, www.sina.com.cn, features the Google’s search box in the middle of its home page. Ganji.com, another highly popular Web site, displays Google’s search box in its upper-left hand corner.

However Google is unlikely to stop censoring its results, people with knowledge of the situation said. Instead, they said it was more likely that that the company would shut down the search engine and try to reach Chinese customers instead through its search engine based in the United States.

If it did close its Chinese search engine, Google has other operations in China that it hopes to save, including a toehold in the country’s lucrative mobile phone business.

Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive officer, said last week that “something will happen soon” to resolve Google’s fate in China. Reporters have been camped at Google’s Beijing headquarters since then in anticipation of an announcement that the firm would close down some or all of its China operations.

Since Google opened the China-based service about four years ago, it has filtered responses to users’ searches to remove results that the government finds objectionable, from pornography to political topics such as Chinese human-rights issues. Despite the self-censorship, the company has drawn a strong following, especially among educated and wealthier Chinese internet users.

Google has a widespread network of Chinese partners who have set up their Web sites to link to Google’s Chinese-language search engine. The government’s warning was a reminder to Web sites that they are responsible for any content on their sites, even if provided by a third party like Google.

Those companies could switch to more government-friendly services like Baidu, the rival search engine that holds the dominant share of the China market. Should they remain loyal to Google, the companies could satisfy government censors by filtering their customers’ searches themselves, excluding objectionable topics before relaying them to Google.

But that option could prove difficult, especially for smaller companies, who would have to buy or develop new software to do that job. It would be easier for most to simply switch to another search engine.

If Google refused to censor its searches, industry specialists said the government would most likely disrupt the service temporarily, frustrating users and driving them away from the search engine and possibly from its partners’ Web sites.

Users of Google’s worldwide search engine, google.com, would be likely to find their situation unchanged, industry specialists said. The site is accessible within China, but Chinese internet users can only gain access to Web pages that have been approved by Chinese censors, rather than Google’s own employees.

Asked Sunday about the Chinese government’s warning to Google partners, a Google spokeswoman, Courtney Hohne, declined to comment. A company statement last week said that Google had “been very clear that we are no longer going to self-censor our search results.”

“We are in active discussions with the Chinese government but we are not going to engage in a running commentary about those conversations,” the statement said.

China’s position has seemed equally unyielding. On Friday, Li Yizhong, China’s minister of industry and information technology, warned Google, “If you want to do something that disobeys Chinese law and regulations, you are unfriendly, you are irresponsible and you will have to bear the consequences.”

Source: New York Times (March 14, 2010)

China Issues Warning to Google’s Partners is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

To recap on what happened, it was December last year when the Google – China relations took a bad turn. Someone from China targeted human right activists Gmail accounts. These Google human rights activists accounts in China were hacked by hackers who originated from mainland China. As a reaction, the dismayed authorities at Google threatened to withdraw its services from China, saying that it can no longer censor its search results on the Chinese version of Google homepage i.e. Google.cn. Google, in a detailed blog post said that if it is unable to find a way to operate an unfiltered search engine within the Chinese law, which currently requires it to block access to millions of websites, it will have no option but to close its operations in China. Few days later, Google-China debacle took a new turn when Google in a secret counter-offensive encounter managed to hack these Chinese hackers back. It was successful in breaking into the source computer in Taiwan which was involved in these attacks. Google engineers, thus found out some evidence which were pointing fingers towards mainland China. It appeared as if the whole script was orchestrated by the Chinese government. Later in a new development, U.S. authorities were able to track down the man who wrote the code to attack Google in China. The guy in question was a freelance security consultant in China, and his discovery made it even more difficult for the Chinese government to deny their involvement.

In mid last month, some more scary details came to light where linkage of two Chinese Institutions were discovered in hacking Google sites. These schools were also reported having tacit connections with PLA.

Google also delayed the launch of two Android based smartphones from Motorola and Samsung, and didn’t plan to unveil Nexus One in China.

On Friday, Li Yizhong, minister for industry and information technology

, said:

If [Google] takes steps that violate Chinese laws, that would be unfriendly, that would be irresponsible, and they would have to bear the consequences.

Chinese officials like Mr Li are trying their best to encourage Google to continue its operations in the country. Li said that “[Google] has taken 30 per cent of the Chinese search market”. He further asked Google to continue in China by saying:

If you don’t leave, China will welcome that, if you don’t leave, it will be beneficial for the development of the internet in China.

It appears rather clear now that a compromise between Google and China is far from arriving. Google will rather like to close down search engine than compromising on Chinese-made principles.

Source: Redmond Pie (March 14, 2010)

Google to Shutdown Search Engine in China is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

ChinaTravelTrends.com, new interactive platform for China outbound tourism, launched in Berlin, with backing of PATA

Chinese affluent citizens increasingly like to travel abroad, but distrust official information.

With more than 50 million outbound travellers expected to leave China in 2010, the Chinese outbound market is attracting more and more attention of destinations around the world.

As part of the ITB Convention 2010, a workshop organised by the German-based COTRI China Outbound Tourism Research Institute and the Chinese company Dragon Trail, presented Social Media Marketing as the most promising way to reach the Chinese market. Greg Duffell, CEO of PATA and Geoffrey Lipman, Special Adviser to the UNWTO, supported this view in the panel discussion with Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Georg Arlt and Jens Thraenhart, leaders of COTRI and Dragon Trail respectively.

China is the country with the largest number of internet users in the world and has also developed into the largest tourism source market in Asia. With growing choice and sophistication of the Chinese travellers, destinations and companies have to use up-to-date communication to reach the attention and imagination of these high-spending customers. Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are banned in China, but their Chinese equivalents are getting even more traffic than the “western” services.

As Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Georg Arlt, director of COTRI China Outbound Tourism Research Institute, pointed out in his The Chinese Outbound market is one of the few source markets which continued to grow even during the global economic crisis. In 2009, more than 47.5 million Chinese travelled across the border, an increase of 4% compared to 2008. The Chinese government has recently declared to give more support to the growth of outbound tourism in the future with a least 9% more outbound travels every year planned. „In the year of transformation 2010, China remains the most important emerging market to regain lost ground“, Prof. Arlt pointed out.

Social Media are increasingly important especially for the younger, affluent and techno-savvy Chinese. Word of Mouth and Word of Mouse are key elements of reaching this crucial segment of the Chinese outbound market. It is also an excellent barometer of the rapidly evolving consumer trends and interests that are relevant for destinations seeking to attract a greater share of this market, as Jens Thraenhart,. Executive Partner of Beijing-based Dragon Trail illustrated in his presentation.

The workshop started with some personal remarks of Geoffrey Lipman, who shared his 25 years of experience in working with the Chinese government and the Chinese tourism industry leaders. In step with the Chinese economic miracle, China has build a tourism infrastructure from scratch, which now handles close to 2 billion domestic trips and is more and more embracing also outbound travel.

Gregory Duffell, CEO of PATA, remembered the audience however of the fact, that the Chinese tourists will not come automatically to a destination if they do not perceive to get the right treatment and the right products for their tastes and expectations. Nevertheless Duffell confirmed that PATA is putting special emphasis on China, which is also documented by the publications, PATA and COTRI have jointly published in the last few months.

The workshop concluded with all four panelist pushing a button to officially launch the the interactive platform for China outbound travel.

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

Dragon Trail provides brand engagement solutions for hotel companies, tourism organization, and travel corporations, as well as small to mid-size businesses seeking to build a brand presence in China and connecting with consumers in China by leveraging social media channels and digital marketing.

www.chinatraveltrends.com is the new authoritative one-stop resource portal and travel industry community on China Outbound Tourism, organized jointly by COTRI and Dragon Trail.

PATA (Pacific Asia Travel Association) is a membership association acting as a catalyst for the responsible development of the Asia Pacific travel and tourism industry. PATA officially endorses and back ChinaTravelTrends.com – please see here for more information.

Attached photo:

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Georg Arlt (COTRI), Jens Thraenhart (Dragon Trail), Geoffrey Lipman (UNWTO) and Gregory Duffell (PATA) jointly starting www.ChinaTravelTrends.com at ITB Berlin, March 11, 2010.

Roundup: Western travel destinations aim for Chinese tourists

While last year’s drop in western outbound travel could be worrisome, many tourism professionals are developing new marketing skills to attract more Chinese tourists.

At the China Outbound Tourism Marketing Seminar on Thursday, an event held during the world’s largest tourism fair ITB in Berlin, travel professionals were provided with new insights on how to attract the Chinese market.

“In 2009 China was up 4 percent in both travel and spending while the rest of the world is down 4 to 6 percent”, said Professor Wolfgang Georg Arlt, founder of COTRI research Institute.

Getting over last year’s economic slump isn’t going to be easy, especially for the travel industry.

Professor Geoffrey Lipman, assistant-secretary general of the World Tourism Organization, told Xinhua: “Chinese outbound tourism is not going to be a cure for the weakened global tourism.”"It’s the whole economy that’s weak,” he said. “If the global economy rights itself over the next few years, tourism will come back.”This year’s ITB fair is putting a lot of emphasis on how to adapt to the post-crisis era.
Jens Thraenhart, founder of China Travel Trends website, sees social media as the most important tool in capturing new market share.

“There are 390 million online Chinese Internet users, more than in the United States and there are 42 million bloggers, which is more than Europe and the United States together,” Thraenhart said at the marketing event.
Thraenhart said that offering travel services only on English Web sites was not sufficient enough to attract Chinese travelers.

“People are going to have to tap into the Chinese social media landscape, like RenRen,” Thraenhart said. RenRen is one of the leading social networking Web sites in China.

Dominique Hertzer, an entrepreneur who studied Chinese and is building her tourism business in Germany, told Xinhua that “after attending this seminar, I have a new business model.’”I realize now that social media is the most important communication tool in the Chinese market,” she said.

Djibril Baba Taboure, who runs a business travel service company in Mali, Africa, said the lecture proved hopeful for his present business model.

“We are getting a lot of business people from China coming to Africa,” Taboure said. “And I hope Chinese tourists will come after that.”Lipman said that China “is one of those places that once you begin to understand it, you cannot get it out of your head.”"By 2020, China will be the largest inbound and outbound tourism market in the world,” he said.

Source:  TMC News (March 12, 2010)

CHINATRAVELTRENDS.COM DESCRIPTION

ChinaTravelTrends.com (Twitter: @CnTravelTrends) has been launched and managed as a free informational resource since the fall of 2009 by Dragon Trail, and now is being expanded as the new interactive platform for China outbound tourism, organized jointly by COTRI and DragonTrail.

ChinaTravelTrends.com is the one-stop resource website and community focused on China Outbound Tourism in English language, giving international travel and tourism organizations insights about the complexity of the China travel market and its online landscape. Information will include interviews, articles from contributors and experts, syndicated reports, marketplace of services, a community to connect with fellow professionals, industry surveys, and an expert panel.

ChinaTravelTrends.com includes the following services to bring together travel and tourism professionals via trade news, reports, networking and job opportunities, topical discussions, searchable archives, and reference directories.

1. Online Magazine: News, trends, and insight: original and articles aggregated from third party resources, written and complied by our editors and contributors. Articles are categorized and archived.

2. Resources: We provide links to other relevant websites and blogs, as well give access to reports and presentations for download as they become available. We will also provide directories of travel agents, tour operators, travel websites, as well as relevant service providers (at the discretion of the publishers).

3. Calendar of Events: To advance yourself or your company, we will inform about industry events.

4. Community: The integration of the ChinaContact community into ChinaTravelTrends.com at http://community.chinatraveltrends.com will enable members to connect, share ideas, and communicate.

5. Expert Panel: ChinaTravelTrends.com will appoint China travel and tourism experts and marketing specialists to serve on the China Travel Trends advisory board to share their insights so international travel organizations may understand and harvest the China Outbound Tourism opportunity.

6. Interviews: China Travel Trends will provide insights by interviewing experts via video, audio, or text.

7. Event Coverage: China Travel Trends is happy to send editorial staff to relevant industry events on behalf of the organizer to provide coverage via the ChinaTravelTrends.com website and its online presence, including community, Twitter feed, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Xing pages.

Contribution: We welcome contribution from individuals and companies to contribute relevant original articles, reports and presentations, as well as make us aware of third party articles and reports.

China Travel Trends is published in association with Dragon Trail, the premier brand engagement firm focused on travel and tourism, that increases brand awareness and revenues for travel brands in the Chinese market by leveraging emerging technologies and new media channels, and COTRI, the leading advisory and resource firm to assist travel and tourism organizations to cater to Chinese tourists.

ChinaTravelTrends.com will strive to offer you a brand new experience of acquiring accurate information, insightful analysis and report with regard to China outbound tourism, as well as more interactive and effective networking opportunities with the others around the world via social media. Also join our pages on Xing.com, LinkedIn.com and Facebook Groups and Facebook Pages, and follow us on Twitter @CnTravelTrends.

ITB Workshop reveals: Social Media Marketing is the best way to get the attention of the growing Chinese Outbound Tourism market is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

The promise is made in partnership with hotel chains at home and abroad, including Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide (NYSE: HOT | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating), Accor and Jinjiang Inn Co., Ltd.

Since the beginning of 2010, Ctrip.com has acquired Hong Kong-based Wing On Travel for HKD 684 million, announcing a foray into the holidaymaking market.

To Ctrip.com CEO Fan Min, the acquisition will bring oversea tourism resources to the company. Moreover, Ctrip.com will take control of tourism resources in the tourist destinations of Wing On Travel through the latter’s service network.

Then, Ctrip.com announced a plan to issue 5.7 million ADSs for a fundraising of more than USD 200 million. The raised capitals will be put into its pillar business like air ticket booking, hotel room booking, holidaymaking and business tour, for example, the acquisition of traditional travel agencies in Beijing and provinces of Guangdong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

Actually, Ctrip.com is not the first online travel agency to foray into the tourism industry. Previously, eLong Inc. (Nasdaq: LONG) aroused repulsion from archrivals including traditional travel agencies because of blind expansion of product lines. Different from Ctrip.com, eLong says currently that it will still focus on hotel room booking, since it just began to make profits from 2009.

In foreign countries, major tourism service providers all offer integrated services. Holidaymaking products are not only standardized, but also individualized.

In the first ten years after its foundation, Ctrip.com focused on business tour. In the second ten years starting from 2010, the company will adjust its strategy, providing services for individual travelers on an integrated platform.

In recent 20 years, individual travelers accounted for 70% to 80% of the tourists in countries of Europe and America. The proportion will top 70% for China in a few years.

Moreover, individual travelers tend to book services on the Internet. In 2010, China’s online air ticket booking, hotel room booking and packed tourism products will generate 27% more revenues from a year earlier to CNY 4.75 billion or USD 695.8 million, according to the latest report released by iResearch Consulting Group. The figure will jump to CNY 9.01 billion in 2013.

Individual travelers provide more opportunities for Ctrip.com, which started its business from the Internet, to snatch market share from traditional travel agencies and consolidate tourism resources.

(USD 1 = CNY 6.83)

Source: www.nanfangdaily.com.cn (March 12, 2010)

Ctrip.com Focuses on Individual Travelers is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

A surge in Chinese exports for January has kicked the world’s fastest-growing economy back into life, at least in the eyes of Westerners. But China is still a difficult place to do business. Is there an opportunity for business social networks to break down trade barriers?

China is celebrating its 4,708th year. It is the year of the tiger and the country is safe in the knowledge that its economy is back on track. The trade figures make promising reading. Chinese exports for January are up, manufacturing is at its highest output since August and the service sector is recovering on the back of its traditional industries. Although much of this growth in trade is with non-Western countries, such as Brazil and India, interest in the West has not diminished. The feeling is mutual.

With the growth of domestic consumption, however, Chinese firms have switched emphasis from trading with overseas companies to internal trade. The domestic market has matured and this is attractive for any business outside the region. It also has a huge skilled market of IT programmers who are now starting to compete with India for outsourced software development.

However, trading with China is tricky. Cultural issues, regionalised business practices and ethics and the sheer number of willing business partners are huge barriers to entry.

Derek Ling, head of Tianji.com, China’s largest business social network with more than four million users, claims that service-sector SMEs in China are crying out for links with Western businesses, offering legal advice on business issues, partnerships for the travel industry and local accountancy. Using a social network, he says, is a window on local businesses that previously have been very difficult to reach. Tianji has just launched an English-speaking version of the site to help fuel links with Chinese service-sector businesses. It can unlock doors, but it is up to Western businesses to push them open.

It brings into question the role of social networks in business. For China, social media has been a sticky issue recently. Facebook and Twitter have been banned and a row erupted with Google over privacy, but business social media is different. It is geared towards creating links, developing leads and recommendations for businesses. It is the recommendations that really drive these sites. It is important for CIOs to make a distinction as it is becoming a trend to ban social networking in the workplace.

Social networking has an opportunity to facilitate trade not just in China but in any country. Business social networks can thrive by offering users the ability to establish community trade groups, marrying local expertise with international opportunity. It is a unique position that traditionally would take months, even years to establish, during which time alien firms leave themselves open to abuse from unknown quantities. Business social networking goes some way to limiting the risk by offering a platform for recommendation, but those networks have to have local knowledge, to have been established with local connections in mind. Any international connection is therefore a window of opportunity on an already established community of businesses.

This is where true trade links can be established. For a region such as China it makes more sense than ever to investigate social networks as a first port of call for researching and making new business contacts. Small to medium-sized businesses in particular are recognising the benefits of opening their doors to new opportunities and nowhere is this more evident than in the IT sector.

Source: Computing.co.uk (March 10, 2010)

Social networks are key to cracking China is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

Fanfou, Jiwai and Digu were some of the first Twitter clones to become successful in China.

However all three – plus Twitter itself – were blocked by the Chinese government in July 2009, because of their usage during the uprisings in Ürümqi. According to an AFP article, Chinese authorities blamed online agitators for helping to stoke violence in that region.

China’s Twitter Clones is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

(Fortune Magazine) — What economic crisis? After a blip last winter, China is growing at more than 8% a year, and the scale and speed at which the country is building a modern infrastructure are mind-boggling.

But once you’ve absorbed the metrics — the size of its trade surplus, the thousands of miles of high-speed railways, the new ports and highways — a nagging question comes into focus: Sure, China can grow, but can its companies innovate? Can they build products that will compete in the global marketplace?

At first sight, it seems a ridiculous question. China’s universities are turning out hundreds of thousands of scientists and engineers; its computing wizards are legendary, and not just because they appear to be among the world’s best hackers and copiers of others’ intellectual property.

Venture capitalists talk about the sheer thrill of watching Chinese startups, saying it reminds them of Silicon Valley in its garage-lab days. Yet it’s worth remembering that China’s recent supercharged economic growth has not been led by innovative private companies. It’s mainly the consequence of a government-directed boom in bank lending, much of it to favored state-owned enterprises.

If you ask management consultants to list the Chinese companies best known and admired in the outside world, many of them would be in basic industry and infrastructure — the oil giants CNOOC and Sinopec, for example.

Don’t get me wrong; many of these businesses are world-class. I routinely get better mobile reception in rural China than I do in New York’s Westchester County and this from a company, China Mobile, that regularly adds 4 million customers to its roster each month. But at least part of the companies’ successes depend on privileged access to capital and their close relationships with China’s power structure.

An illuminating comparison can be found in Japan’s emergence as a global economic power after World War II. Because we’ve become so used to the long Japanese economic stall since its bubble burst in 1989, it’s easy to forget just how extraordinary Japan’s postwar recovery was — and how very different from that seen in China now.

Yes, Japan’s state played a part: The bureaucrats in the powerful Ministry of International Trade and Industry tried, with mixed results, to pick winners, and banks shoveled loans to favored corporations. But Japan’s growth was resolutely led by those private companies investing in their own technologies.

One other difference: Many of China’s biggest businesses are buyers of assets overseas — everything from companies to (so it can seem) half of Australia. Japan’s corporate leaders 50 years ago were exporters, not acquirers. It was not just a question of finding new markets outside Japan; much more important, Japan’s postwar leaders understood that if its companies were to succeed, they had to compete with established corporations in the developed world.

That was how their technology, design, marketing, and customer service would become world-class. And so they went out into the world, however hostile it appeared. When Sony (SNE) opened a showroom in Midtown Manhattan in 1962, it was the first time the Japanese flag had flown in New York City since the war.

No analogies are perfect, of course. Maybe we just don’t see China’s most innovative companies because they have no reason to show us their wares. The Sonys, Panasonics, Toshibas, Hondas, and Toyotas had to export, but China’s domestic market is potentially far larger than Japan’s could ever be.

And as a political matter, what counts for China’s leaders is the internal economic development of China, not whether its private companies are world-beaters. A venture capitalist friend of mine talks of China’s enormous raw talent when it comes to innovation and surmises that we don’t see it yet because we don’t understand the Chinese domestic market well enough.

Still, postwar Japan holds a key lesson. It is when local companies are exposed to the gale of competition in international markets that they really develop the innovative products and technologies that can change the world. Will Chinese companies do that? We’ll see.

Michael Elliott is Editor, TIME International.

China, can you innovate? is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

Guo Dongjie, the vice president of Ctrip.com, said that the recently-promulgated “View on Accelerating Development of Tourism Industry” has greatly improved the status of the tourism industry in China and it has pointed out the direction for the future development of tourism enterprises. As the leader in the Chinese online travel sector, Ctrip.com will focus more on mass tourism while maintaining its competitive advantages in business travel and the medium and high-end vacation businesses.

Guo also said that Ctrip.com will introduce more diversified tourist routes to meet the needs of different groups of people and will make tourist destinations in more areas inside and outside of China. He compared the move to a change from boutiques and specialty stores to warehouse markets.

Source: China Hospitality News (March 8, 2010)

Ctrip.com Mines The Travel And Vacation Market is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

By Joanne Lee-Young, Vancouver SunMarch 8, 2010There was much official fanfare when, after more than a decade of high-level wrangling, Canada got the nod for so-called approved destination status from China. That was a few months ago.

Now, while the actual bilateral agreement gets hammered out — line by arcane line, privately — B.C.-based tour operators are all a-chatter about how approved destination status (ADS) has played out in the U.S. and Australia, and what they would like to see in Canada’s version.

Technically, the status means that Chinese tour operators and travel agents can organize tours and advertise Canadian destinations. The hope, of course, is for an influx of tourists from China.

But just because they come in larger numbers, finding a money-making model won’t be easy, according to some B.C. tour operators.

For example, they cringe at the latest market gossip from their counterparts in the U.S., which received ADS in 2007.

“It’s been horrible for them. Players there are undercutting and undercutting each other,” to sign up Chinese tourists, said Albert Tseng, owner of NTS International Group, a Richmond travel agency, and president of the Canadian Inbound Tourism Association (Asia-Pacific).

“How much do you think it costs for two to stay overnight in L.A. with hotel, three meals, transportation? Maybe $200 a day? But right now, it’s on for just half that,” said Tseng.

Over at Richmond-based Lion International Travel Service, manager Yan Tai has worse buzz: “We just heard that some outfits on the West Coast are offering hotel, coach and three meals for $38 . . . . We just can’t do that.”

To make up the math on such cutthroat deals, these tour operators take steep commission fees from their suppliers, usually retailers, but also others.

For example, a tour guide will wing a busload of guests through a store and then takes a percentage cut out of whatever the tourists purchase.

The problem is that the math eventually catches up with them. In Australia, which has had ADS since 1999, this practice got so out of hand that the national tourism commission there now keeps tabs on price gouging. Said Tseng: “They are trying to eliminate or reduce this commission shopping. You can get five per cent, that’s reasonable, but not 50 per cent. Imagine if a retailer has to pay 50 per cent commission to get a tour to come through his store, how much does he have to turn around and charge a customer for a bottle of Coke?”

“In the U.S., there was a rush in implementing ADS, so there are not many guidelines … Initially, it was also very chaotic in Australia,” said Tseng. “But by 2005, they were able to assess problems like this, and establish quality [assurance] programs on what’s acceptable.”

One of the other irritants for local tour operators is collecting payment from travel agents in China.

It’s true that ADS will likely make banking transactions such as wire transfers go more smoothly and quickly, but payment terms will still be a thorn specific to dealing with the Chinese market.

“The way our system works and the way it works in other parts of the world is that agents forward payment when passengers depart or before. It’s basically a c.o.d. situation. But China is a little different and sometimes the terms can be dragged out 30 days to 60 days to half a year,” said Tseng, adding that “we shouldn’t have to agree to these business terms at all. It makes it a mess.”

Tai, the manager at Lion International Travel Service, which has locations in Richmond and Burnaby, agrees that collecting money can be a drawn-out process. His company deals with Chinese tourists in many international markets with offices in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the U.S. and Thailand. “We take mainland Chinese tour groups to all these places. The biggest common characteristic is that it’s hard to collect money [from their travel agents]. It’s the same everywhere.”

He’s not sure what the solution could be. “In fact, the business is theirs to give. If you want to be heavy-handed and say you must pay before your group arrives, then, it might not be easy to do business with them. They will choose other companies that give them credit.”

Tony Yin, manager of Vancouver-based 5 Stars Travel, is more optimistic. “Payment is a business negotiation. It’s case by case, depending on the client. Of course, you can get payment up front. People think you can’t, but you can. It depends on the ability of people to negotiate.”

Source: Vancouver Sun (March 8, 2010)

Making money from Chinese tours isn’t easy, agencies say is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

Although the final amount of the total consumption has not yet been released, Fetida (费提达), the Tourism Bureau’s executive officer, said: ‘You (Chinese tourists) are very important to our business indeed’ at the welcome dinner in front of 60 tables filled with Chinese tourists. Katz , the director-general of the Empire State Building observation deck, and Perrin, the CEO of Cartier North America, also said, the Chinese customers are growing rapidly and becoming one of the main customers. The growth of the number of Chinese customers is significant especially during the Chinese New Year.

On February 16th, when the Empire State Building invited Consul-General Keyu Peng (彭克玉) for the lightning ceremony, only Chinese guests were invited. Red Lanterns were also hanging in the windows at the entrance in order to let the Chinese customers feel warmly welcomed.
The U.S. official organizer said the reason for the event being supported by the Empire State Building, Macy’s, Cartier and other famous businesses is the recognition of the consumption power of the Chinese tourist.

On February 14th, thousands of Chinese tourists rushed into the prosperous 5th Avenue of New York City during their Chinese New Year Holiday, with all different kinds of Chinese dialects. Some stores were decorated with styles of Chinese New Year Celebration and also presented Asian assistants only to attract more Chinese customers.

Miss Wu, who works in the financial industry in Shanghai, visited Gucci, Fendi and Versace within only a few hours after her arrival to 5th Avenue, and purchased more than a thousand dollars each time in almost every store. With a moderate income as she said, she laughed and said the price of the luxury brands in U.S is cheaper than those in China, with no worry about fake products. As a result, despite the possibility of taxation after returning China, she still seized the opportunity and made generous purchases.

Lizi Zhu (朱黎子), a travel agent of China Travel Service Office with the traveling group said that the spending power of Chinese tourists continue to increase over the years. With the tourism market in Europe and Southeast Asia getting saturated, they show great interest in the United States. ‘And the giant spending power of the Chinese customers usually is reflected on the last day. We will wait and see’.

The Chinese Lunar New Year with its millions of travelers is not only a gala for domestic retail sales, but a feast for overseas retailers, too.

Source: China Decoded (March 1, 2010)

More Than 1,000 Chinese Tourists Head To New York To Celebrate Chinese New Year, Welcomed By Lion Dance At Macy’s

Chinese tourists were invited on an exclusive tour of the Empire State Building to celebrate Chinese New Year in New York (Image courtesy Xinhua)

Last fall, Jing Daily wrote about the increased outreach efforts of retailers like Macy’s to reach out to Chinese — and other free-spending — tourists in New York. From special discount cards to smaller, but similarly appreciated, gestures like multilingual signs, retailers in major American tourist destinations like New York have recognized the huge opportunity that China’s growing ranks of outbound tourists present and have retooled their marketing appropriately.

This week, the efforts of Macy’s and others were apparent, as China’s largest-ever America-bound tour group (numbering around 1,000) hit New York in a Chinese New Year tour organized by Continental Airlines and the New York Galaxy Travel Agency. According to Chinese media, the activities organized by Macy’s were a hit among members of this large tourist contingent. From Huanqiu, via Xinhua (translation by Jing Daily team):

America’s largest retailer, Macy’s, on February 15 received the largest Chinese tour group ever to travel to America, the “Gathering of 1,000.” These tourists took part in a lion dance activity organized by Macy’s to commemorate Chinese New Year and received special shopping cards and gifts in a welcoming ceremony.

These visitors, most of whom are from Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, will stay a total of 8-10 days in the U.S., and their tour will convene in New York during Chinese New Year. In addition to visiting the 100-year-old Macy’s store — which held the lion dance for these tourists — the group enjoyed a special lighting event at the Empire State Building, which was opened up exclusively for Chinese tourists on Chinese New Year. At the event, Chinese Consul General Peng Keyu attended the lighting ceremony, which lit up New York in red and yellow.

It is estimated that the “Gathering of 1,000″ Chinese tourists will contribute roughly $6 million to the U.S. economy in this trip alone.

Naturally, Chinese online opinion about this group of 1,000 free-spending tourists (who apparently spent an average of $6,000 each, if Xinhua’s estimates are correct) is mixed, with the Jiefang Ribao (Liberation Daily) quoting critical netizens and concluding somewhat cooly, “This tourist trip is just a tourist trip. It proves nothing and it changes nothing. Isn’t it overkill to cheer or criticize it?”

Chinese tourists enjoyed a lion dance event at Macy’s this week

While it may be overkill to read too much into this huge tourist group, and it certainly seems overly reactionary to criticize it too much — as Chinese tourists, like anyone else, have the right to spend their money on tourism and shopping if they so choose — New York retailers (and tour operators) definitely have reason to cheer. If the news coming out of Taiwan this week — where the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has reiterated its desire to attract 3,000 mainland Chinese tourists daily in 2010 for a target of 1 million tourists for the year — is any indication, retailers in Taipei and elsewhere are likely hoping for similar waves of tourists to flood their registers with cash.

Source: Jing Daily (Feb 18, 2010)

Chinese Tourist Spends Thousands Of Dollars Within Hours In The USA is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

The China Observer: You co-authored a report last year that found China will host the world’s fourth-largest number of wealthy households by 2015. Who are China’s luxury consumers? In terms of age dispersion, are luxury consumers relatively younger than their counterparts in developed markets?

Vinay Dixit: We define Chinese wealthy households with an annual income of RMB 250,000 and above. In terms of Purchasing Power Parity, this translates to US$ 67,000 annual income. Please refer to the slide below for ranking of countries in terms of wealthy households.

One key difference of Chinese wealthy consumers when compared to their counterparts from other countries is their youth. On an average, they are about 20 years younger than their cousins in US or Japan. We do expect that the wealthy consumers in China will retain this characteristic in the next decade as well.

The China Observer: The 2009 McKinsey Consumer survey emphasized that companies should no longer assume the existence of a homogenous “China market” and monolithic block of 1.3 billion consumers, adopting a one-size-fits-all China strategy. The survey introduces the “cluster map” approach to China market strategy. How will this alter the business models of foreign luxury companies trying to gain a foothold in China beyond tier-1 cities?

Vinay Dixit: The last decade has seen remarkable changes in China – those relating to consumer evolution, infrastructure development, income levels and consumption patterns, to name a few. Our research (based on 30,000 consumers studied across ~60 cities since 2005) clearly shows that a “city-cluster” framework is fast replacing the “city-tier” approach when it comes to targeting the Chinese consumers.  Several key attitudes are now becoming more and more consistent in a geography of 250-300 km radius around key cities, irrespective of the tier in which these cities are.

This has significant implications in both “where to play” and “how to play” decisions of the companies. It provides significant clues towards choice of geographic areas that companies could prioritize in their launch and expansion plans on one hand, as well as on how to customize their go-to-market strategies in these chosen geographies on the other. Ultimately, we believe that this framework can significantly support a prioritized, sustainable and profitable expansion of a company’s business in China

With respect to luxury consumers, we see significant differences in their profile and attitudes across various cities and regions in China. We introduced the concept of 7 wealthy consumer segments in our last years study – even within the tier-1 markets of Beijing and Shanghai, we see significant differences in composition of the wealthy consumers. The differences in other tiers and geographies are even starker.

Source: McKinsey Insight China (March 5, 2010)

Luxury Consumer Culture in China: Inside Observer Interview with McKinsey & Company is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

Sex is definitely the universal theme for Chinese websites, from the major portals to small sites. It is very interesting to compare a US portal with a Chinese portal site to see the difference on this topic. It happens Yahoo is a good example for this since Yahoo has a Chinese Yahoo (Yahoo China) and it is comparable to other major Chinese portals, such as Sina.com.

There is no sex on the front page of Yahoo at all. You basically don’t see any ads or words related to sex. This is pretty much the standard for all major US portals.

But the Chinese Yahoo (or other Chinese portal sites) is totally a different animal.The following picture is the top part of the front page of Chinese Yahoo on Oct. 31, 2005. All the pink-marked sections are related to sex. Here are some of the titles (mostly ads): “Two Sexes”, “Male and Female Valuable Book, the Final Station of Sexual Happiness”, “Happy Contraception, Making Love at Ease”, “Nuclear Weapon of Sexual Happiness for Men”.

More Sex on Chinese Yahoo

The following picture is from the middle section of the front page of Chinese Yahoo on Oct. 31, 2005. Again the pink-marked sections are related to sex. Here are some of the titles and ads: “Oomph Forum”, “Parking and Making Love”,”The Night with Viagra”.

Yahoo Is Not Alone

Chinese Yahoo is not the only site having a lot of sexual contents on the front page. Sex is more or less the theme for the other major Chinese portals. Even the famous Xinhua News Agency has promoted the Playboy contest on its website (see the picture below).

The question is why is so much sex on Chinese websites. The Chinese government apparently has not done anything to control it. The Chinese Women’s Associations don’t care about it either. China does not have a strong religious network and most Chinese do not have a strong bond with a religion anyway so religions are not going to help much on this. However, sex is a big money maker for Chinese websites since most of the sexual titles are ads and it attracts more people to the sites.

I don’t know if Chinese people are bothered by all of the sexual contents on the Net. But sex is part of people’s life after all as Confucius once said.

Source: About.com

China’s obsession with Sex Online is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

Baidu.com:

Baidu (百度) is the Chinese Google. It dominates Chinese language search with about an 80% market share and is one of the biggest sites worldwide. As a local Chinese site it censors it’s search results. Like Google, Baidu offers a number of services apart from search, including Maps, documents, MP3 search, Baidu Space (a social network with over 100 million users) Baidu Encyclopedia, (China’s largest encyclopedia by users) and is launching a new video site called QiYi.com in March.

QQ.com

QQ is a portal that runs a number of services, most notably its IM service with over 1 billion registered users and it’s social networking service Qzone, which some claim is bigger than Facebook.

Kaixin001.com:

Kaixin001 (开心网) is one China’s fastest growing Social networking sites (SNS) with 75 million users. It claims to be growing at a rate of 100,000 to 200,000 new user registrations per day Essentially a Facebook clone with applications, gaming, groups and pages.

Renren.com

Renren.com (人人网)is another social networking site similar to Facebook. and is a fierce rival of Kaixin001. Renren.com claims to have 120 million registered users. It mainly caters for college students, though it is actively looking to expand its reach.

Youku.com

Youku  (优酷) was ranked #1 in Chinese Internet video sector in January 2010. Users can upload videos of any length and it’s library includes many full length, popular films and TV episodes from the West as well as Chinese content. It’s main rival is Tudou.com

Tudou.com:

Tudou (土豆网) is a video-sharing site and competes directly with Youku.com. Like Youku, users can upload videos of any length. Tudou serves over 100 million videos each day with more than 40,000 new videos published daily.

Tianya.cn:

Tianya (天涯)  portrays itself as the “King of the Chinese Internet community”. Certainly it’s BBS message boards are the most active in China. Every issue under the sun is debated, argued and posted here. Many Chinese internet memes start here and replies to posts can run into the thousands. More than 33 million people across China regularly visit the Tianya forum.

Taobao.com

Taobao (淘宝网) is the Chinese Ebay. It is China’s largest Internet retail platform , taking up about three-fourths of the market share. Nearly 50% of all Chinese Internet users are registered on Taobao. Alibaba’s Jack Ma has said: “eBay may be a shark in the ocean, but I am a crocodile in the Yangtze River. If we fight in the ocean, we lose—but if we fight in the river, we win.”

Douban.com

Douban (豆瓣)  is a popular Chinese social media site ( ranked 24th in China) with over 30 million unique users a month. It started about five years ago and has all the now common features of social media sites such as groups, the ability to “friend” others, etc.Douban users tend to be between 20-35 years old and single. Mostly into arts, films, music and culture. The CEO of the site Ah Bei claims that: “Douban has never been an SNS site; it has a community or social networking community. Perhaps it’s a social network based on books, or  on movies, but Douban is broader than that.”

Douban has recently had a redesign, which adopts a Facebook style feed on the frontpage.

Sina.com.cn

Sina (新浪) is reportedly China’s largest “infotainment” portal and is third in terms of Traffic Rank within China, behind Baidu and QQ. Sina is popular for news, but also for it’s blogs, which are some of the most read in the world. It recently launched a microblogging service (like Twitter) t.sina.com.cn. which has proved extremely popular (now the largest micro-blogging site in China) and is growing at a tremendous rate.

Source: RenMedia (March 4, 2010)

10 Important Chinese Websites is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

Picture a social network user. Once upon a time it was easy – they were pimply teens huddled in messy bedrooms. Or young professionals organising their social lives. These days, however, they’re becoming far harder to categorise.

Last year Facebook reported huge growth in the 25 to 54 age group. After a feverish year of growth for social networks in Asia, are there similar signs of a broadening demographic?

Generally, the answer is yes. Figures from Synovate (see below) point to more older consumers engaging with social networks.

Kevin Huang, CEO of Pixel Media, which has worked with online firms including Facebook, agrees that the over-35s are now growing quickly on social networks, especially in sophisticated markets such as Hong Kong and Singapore.

“How many times have you recently heard one of your friends say, ‘Wow, my dad’s just gone on Facebook?’” says Huang. “We’re also seeing [older users on] Windows Live Messenger as well as boards like Discuss and Uwants in Hong Kong. Twitter also seems to appeal to a slightly older crowd.”

Thomas Crampton, Asia-Pacific director of 360 digital influence at Ogilvy PR, agrees there has been a change. “This demographic shift takes place along the lines of internet penetration, which should not be confused with the number of broadband connections. Indonesia, in particular, has lately had a boom of women joining the social internet world via BlackBerry.”

An interesting exception appears to be Japan, according to Adrian Roche, digital lead at OgilvyOne Japan. There, the leading network is Mixi, and Roche says that its user base is still youth-driven. “We still have a dominant user base in the 18 to 34 age range. The 35 to 49 age range comes in second place, but this is a distant second place. The age range of 50-plus doesn’t yet exist.”

Unsurprisingly, market leaders elsewhere are broadening their target demographics in line with the change. Facebook, the global leader and now a significant force in Southeast Asia, is built around personal relationships regardless of age. In China, meanwhile, leading network Xiaonei rebranded as Renren last year to reflect its broadening user base: Xiaonei means ‘on campus’, a reflection of the network’s student origins; Renren simply means ‘everybody’.

Other networks, left in the shade by the leaders, are relying on a more focused approach. Globally, MySpace has recently sought to turn itself around by focusing on entertainment, so far with limited success.

In Southeast Asia, Friendster was the leading network for several years before being widely usurped by Facebook last year. Ian Stewart, head of Asia at Friendster, points out that, unlike the US, the vast majority of internet users in its key markets are young – around 80 per cent are under 40 in the Philippines and Indonesia. So despite growth among older users, the young demographic is still core.

For that reason, Friendster is sticking with a youth positioning. “For Friendster we remain committed to our focus on being the social network for youth and their friends, and thus act as a gateway for brands wanting to connect with a younger demographic online,” he says.

Nevertheless, he admits that older users will “offer opportunities in the future”. For advertisers, a broader demographic on social networks opens up a whole new way of engaging consumers for brands with a more ‘grown-up’ audience. Crampton points to the cosmetics market as an early example of a sector that has had to respond to social media’s advance – many blogs and communities have arisen to discuss brands in the sector.

Lawrence Wan, general manager of OMG Digital in China, agrees, pointing to Chinese campaigns by brands such as Ponds and Neutrogena, which have put networks at the heart of their communications strategy. “Next is to leverage best practices to brands targeting a more mature female audience, where beauty and cosmetic brands are increasingly finding it difficult to differentiate,” he says. “The battle is starting to move from a heavily TV-driven awareness model to a multi-media model driving engagement and socialising, with SNS increasingly proving to be an integral channel in that strategy.”

The widening appeal of social networks

> In January 2009 Facebook reported that its 35 to 54 user base had grown 276.4 per cent in just six months.

> According to Synovate’s 2009 PAX study of Asia’s upmarket consumers, around 70 per cent of 25- to 34-year-olds use social networks, a figure unchanged from 2008. However, among 35- to 39-year-olds, the figure rose from 59 per cent to 65 per cent, and among 40- to 44-year-olds it rose from 54 per cent to 62 per cent.

> In China, according to iResearch, the 35-plus user base of social network users has doubled year on year since 2007 to well over 30 million users. The biggest driver of that growth is Kaixin001, which has the highest reach of 35-plus users.

Source: Asia Media (March 4, 2010)

Social networking is expanding its reach into the 35+ market and beyond is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online

Broward and Palm Beach counties are working with state tourism agency Visit Florida to lure Chinese tourists, providing materials for travel trade shows in China and welcoming delegations of Chinese travel agents and press to help spread the word about what South Florida offers.

On a recent Friday, a group of eight Chinese travel writers visited Fort Lauderdale, taking a water taxi tour, shopping on Las Olas Boulevard, as well as sampling shrimp and steak at Shula’s on the Beach restaurant, escorted by staff from the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Accompanying the group: Vicky Miao, a Chinese marketer who works for Visit Florida in Shanghai. She touts the state to the estimated 300 million people in China’s middle- and upper-income groups who might consider an overseas trip.

“We’re really enjoying the sunshine here. It’s cold in Shanghai and Beijing now,” Miao said.

Another Chinese visitor marveled at the unusual hand-crafted mask from South America she bought on Las Olas and dreamed of the lifestyle in the waterfront mansions that she passed on the water taxi.

“If I had a lot of money, I could live there. I’d feel like a movie star,” said Grace Zhong, an editor at Voyage, a top travel magazine.

Chinese travel abroad is rising, as China’s economy surges.

This year, the number of Chinese visiting the United States is forecast to jump 15 percent to 556,000, rising faster than any other major source nation though still comprising less than 1 percent of total foreign arrivals to the country, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

By 2020, the number of Chinese traveling abroad to all nations is set to double to 100 million a year, making China the No. 4 source of tourists to the world after Germany, Japan and the United States, according to the World Tourism Organization.

Visit Florida is taking the lead in marketing the state to the Chinese, participating in travel shows in China and distributing materials in Mandarin that showcase separate Florida counties.

The Palm Beach County Convention and Visitors Bureau collaborated on one recent promotion, and so, was able to hand out local information in Mandarin to visiting Chinese travel writers when they recently toured the Flagler Museum, said bureau spokesman Kenneth Morgan.

Hotels keen on international guests also are eyeing China. But Walter Banks, owner of Fort Lauderdale’s Lago Mar Resort & Club, said he’s inclined to work initially through the tourism bureau and Visit Florida to reach Chinese travelers – not market directly in China on his own.

“It’s always good to start working on new markets ever so gradually,” Banks said.

Just how many Chinese now visit Florida is not known, but the number may be approaching 10 percent of those traveling to the states – which could mean maybe 50,000 this year, said Bruce Bommarito, executive vice president of the U.S. Travel Association and a China travel specialist.

Florida focuses international marketing on Europe and Latin America, regions that long have been staples for Florida tourism.

But the state is increasing China efforts, leveraging Florida International University’s 4-year-old hospitality program in Tianjin that trains Chinese students, annual meetings that bring together tourism chiefs from U.S. states and Chinese provinces and a growing push from Miami that started in 2006.

Bill Talbert, president of the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau, has been attending annual travel shows in China and arranged for Chinese groups to film in Miami, including a beauty pageant from Hong Kong. He’s now working on ways to improve Miami’s airline connections with China.

This spring, when the U.S. Travel Association holds its annual Pow Wow trade show showcasing U.S. travel, Chinese TV crews will film the show in Orlando.

“The potential is tremendous for Florida,” Bommarito said.

He cited a recent survey in China that asked people where’d they’d go if money and visas were no concern. The United States came out tops, edging out Paris, he said. “And when they visit the United States, they’re already looking for new destinations. They’re saying “OK, we saw California. We saw New York. Now, let’s look at Florida.”

•About 50 million Chinese now travel overseas a year and 100 million will in 2020.

•China will rank as the No. 4 source of tourists to the world after Germany, Japan and the United States by 2020.

•Chinese visiting the United States tend to start with Hawaii or California; then go to New York or Las Vegas; before coming to Florida.

•Chinese visitors to the United States now spend more on average than any other international visitor: about $6,000 for a three-week trip.

•Travel companies or visitor bureaus seeking to lure Chinese should consider using Mandarin for Web sites, signage and restaurant menus.

•Sources: World Tourism Organization, U.S. Commerce Dept., U.S. Travel Association.

Source: Tampa Online (March 6, 2010)

Florida hoping to lure tourists from China is a post from: China Travel Trends-Reaching the Chinese Travel Market Online