Regular TravelMole Guest Comment by Roy Graff, ChinaContact
Are we making sure our tourism officials understand how to market a destination in China? Regular TravelMole Guest Comment by Roy Graff, ChinaContact
I am asking this question because since I started advising on market entry to China, I have come across many examples of destinations throwing money at the Chinese market with useless campaigns and ineffective marketing.
So many new destinations became ‘approved destination’ (ADS) in the last few years that there was a scramble to prepare Chinese language information, Chinese brochures, websites and go on public and trade road shows in China. Inevitably a host of agencies and companies started offering their services and charging rates that were decided by how much the client was willing to pay rather than how much the service was actually worth. In a free market, this takes time to stabilise but in these cases we are talking about public money coming from tax payers.
I think that the private sector should hold officials accountable for how they spend their budget, especially in a new volatile and sensitive market like China. It is obvious that China cannot be tackled like any other developed tourist economy. But foreignness of culture and language make it especially susceptible to hasty and uninformed decisions by tourism promotion officials.
They should be researching the online and offline marketing channels to understand how search engines work in China, how different demographics use the internet and how to engage the travel trade. This may take more effort than just getting some marketing blurb translated, but surely those paying want a job done properly? It is easy to lose control of your marketing if you don’t understand the market for yourself. China is not easy, granted. But it is not an alien culture and you can know enough to make informed, rational decisions.
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