As China reopened on January 2023, millions of tourists are poised to return to the world stage. This raising hopes of a rebound for the global hospitality industry. Bookings for overseas travel during the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday have soared by 540% from a year ago. According to data from the Chinese travel site, average spending per booking jumped 32%. The top destinations are in the Asia Pacific region, including Australia, Thailand, Japan and Hong Kong. The United States and the United Kingdom also ranked among the top 10. How to make digital marketing strategies to reach and attract more Chinese tourists?
Here are 6 digital marketing strategies from Deep Digital China:
1. Have a Chinese website with Good content is the key of your digital marketing strategies
The first and most important thing to do is to have a website available in Chinese. If your main objective is to reach Chinese customers, an English website won’t be efficient. So make sure that you included Translation fees into your budget. You can also find a bilingual team member, or even better, Webmaster who could assist you during the whole process of creation. And also should make sure the content and pictures are high-quality and attractive.
2. Use E-travel platforms
Having your own website is a great way to publish your own content. Contact information and specific details about your company, but if your main aim is to reach Chinese tourists and attract them to purchase. Hence, a “double online presence” will surely serve you well. You can register your business (hotel, restaurant, etc.) on these famous Chinese platforms.
As you can see in this graph below from China Internet Watch, one-fourth of the online travel agency market belongs to Ctrip. The rest of the market shares belong to Tuniu CY, LVmama, and Aoyou.
3. Listing your business on Chinese social media channels
Partnering with Chinese tour operators is one of the most logical things to do in order to bring in more traffic. However, to ensure your business is also noticed by individual Chinese travelers, you need to make your name as visible as possible on Chinese social media.
Having a listing on popular apps like Dianping, Xiaohongshu,WeChat, Weibo or Taobao (China’s biggest online shopping platform).Having a Dianping sticker on a window of your restaurant/hotel will not hurt at all, and bringing it up during small talk is also recommended.
4. Build Online Presence and Reputation
Chinese tourists are constantly connected on the internet looking for all kinds of information, therefore the knowledge of your brand depends on its integration into the Chinese search engines and social media.
5. Attract Chinese tourists via an Official social media account
Right now, WeChat,Weibo and Xiaohongshu are the most popular social medias in China. You can communicate and interact with your target audiences by these medias.
For example. brands update their visitors on news and promotions, and even create extra benefits such as membership cards and lucky draws on Wechat. And Xiaohongshu is a life-share platform, Chinese tourists will search for useful information on it. It is very important to build official social media accounts to communicate and share the useful information with your target audiences.
6. KOL marketing for video content as an additional tool of your digital marketing strategies
To attract Chinese tourists please consider new Chinese social media tactics. 2019 has so far been a year of video content. The technology now available supports many types of video, and recent studies have shown that video has an engagement rate at least twice that of photos. When it comes to the Chinese market, investing in video content can be done in various ways. There are a range of popular video apps and platforms that people visit to have fun, such as a unicorn DouYin (the Chinese version of app TikTok), which won the hearts of 1 billion users in just over one year.
Above are our digital marketing strategies to attract Chinese tourists. If you are looking for an professional Chinese marketing agency to help you win China market, just don’t hesitate to contact us Deep Digital China.