Go mobile to attract Chinese tourists

According to the last report from Hotels.com, Chinese tourists should be around 174 million by 2019 to spend $264 million overseas. They will be mainly constituted of techsavy millennials with important buying power. Young Chinese are well on their way to take over the Chinese outbound market and hotel owner should stay aware of this.

For those of you who want to attract more Chinese tourists, you need to bear in mind that the main channel Chinese millennial follow are undoubtedly online channel such as online newspapers, social networks and platforms dedicated to travel.

Consumers behaviors differ greatly from what can be found in the West with a lot more activities online than they in Western countries.

What is the impact for Tour operator, hotels and resorts?

Chinese increasingly go mobile with a 50% surge in mobile booking from last year. This means that Chinese are less likely to call for the services of travel agencies than in the past. This is a logical consequence of the rise of the DIY (Do It Yourself), a trend that started with the coming of Chinese millennial into the workforce and their rise of income.

This increase eagerness for independence translates into a need for adaptation for many hotels and resorts.

Young tourists have very specific needs:

The two main needs for those young millennium travelers would be :

• Free Wifi so that they can share their traveling experience in real time on social networks with their friends like Wechat or Weibo the two most popular social networks these days (Chinese tourists and social media on Tnooz).

• Documentation translated in Chinese to know their way around the place.
• Mandarin Speaking staff

Once those primary needs are fulfilled, you can start promoting your resort through a wide range of media, all online. Indeed, more than 90% of the Chinese tourists, especially millennial go online to check for information.

SEO on Baidu to increase your visibility

The Chinese leading search engine has seen its traffic from mobile increase by

This is one more proof of the growing interest for mobile browsing; therefore your website (translated in Chinese and hosted in China or Hong Kong of course!) must have a responsive design to display well on mobile devices (more on Chinese SEO)

Social network :

Many social networks have created apps or have been mobile apps right from the beginning like Wechat.

According to the Grata report, most people possessing Tencent’s Wechat open it more than 10 times per day making it the first app on any phone they are present. (More on social networks used by Chinese tourists )

And this is nothing but a peek at the transforming Chinese digital landscape showing you the current trends.

Further readings

How to attract Chinese tourists