Massive tour groups are the hot trend in Chinese outbound tourism!
In China, you send no less than 4000 employees at a time!
A trip offered by our boss ? Do not reject it !
Chinese cosmetics company called Perfect’s bosses recently decided to send their 4,500 employees on a trip to Netherlands. These ones can be added to the list that just emerged about Chinese boss offering an overseas trip to his hundreds or even thousands employees.
This time, bosses decided to pay a 5 days long company trip to their employees. To do that, they needed to hire 90 buses to ferry the employees around the country. These last ones were more than happy about this unusual trip.
The Chinese tourist group was so huge that it was needed to dispatch them inside different hotels around the Dutch capital, because Amsterdam didn’t have enough hotels and thus enough rooms to accommodate all the employees. Thus, some of them were sleeping in hotels at The Hague, Delft, Rotterdam and Utrecht.
Chinese tourists in Europ
During their trip, these Chinese tourists went around Dutch cities and the National Park of Hoge Veluwe, assisted at a huge gala diner et finally went to do some shopping.
However, when it was time to eat, Chinese tourists preferred to keep in touch with their habits by escaping from Dutch restaurants. Thus they only went eating at Chinese restaurants.
According to Marijke Boom who welcomed a wide number of these Chinese tourists in her restaurant, this event was unbelievable, unusual and she never saw that happened before. Chinese people spend between €500 to €1,000 per person. According to Dutch media, they spend around £5 million during their trip in cities but also in countryside.
Never seen before in Europe
The Netherlands’ minister of economy, Henk Kamp, welcomed the Chinese bosses during a personal reception at the Mauritshuis, an art museum in The Hague renowned for its Dutch Golden Age paintings. This one said, “It’s spectacular that a company would send so many people on an outing to our small nation.”
A spokesman for the Dutch Tourism Bureau also added, “We can only welcome the development like this because 4,500 tourists means 4,500 ambassadors who will spread the word about our country when they go back to China.”
“They will post pictures online and share them with friends and family, why Holland is a good place to spend a vacation.” The Dutch tourism office directors declared that 250,000 Chinese tourists visited Netherlands last year. And they expect to see this figure triple in the coming years.
Others Europeans countries also want to attract these Chines tourists since they represent a huge emerging market representing billion.
A list that is getting bigger
This has been one of the many examples of massive tourist group sent on holidays thanks to the generosity(?) of their boss
Indeed, recently, it was the billionaire Li Jinyuan, chairman of the Chinese company Tiens Group, who sent 6,400 of his employees to Paris in order to celebrate the 20-year-old anniversary of the company. This trip lasted 4 days, fully booking 140 in French capital.
The second one, Li Huisen, director of the company Infinitus, a Chinese herbal health product company sent his 12,700 employees (dispatch in different groups) on a trip to Bangkok and Pattaya in Thailand for 6 days.
Not only do these massive holidays paid by the companies make the employees of said company very happy but their boss too.
Why?
Simply because it gives a lot of publicity and put the company under a good light as a caring company, far far away from the clichés sticking to Chinese companies : working for meager wages, with bad working environment and very little holidays.
Given the state of China labour market it doesn’t come as a surprise :
Better life, more hopes, more choice… for employees.
Nowadays, especially the post 80s’ and 90s’ do not tolerate the bad working conditions their parents may have been used to. They actively seek better working conditions and higher wages (HBR highlighting this for low skill labour) . So, what can be better than advertising your company and courting the most qualified employees (and keeping them once you get them) by buzzing like this?
