New Zealand Tourism is changing with the arrival of Chinese travelers. All the industries of the country profit from this new target and helped boost overall shopping spending by 500 million dollars last year.
China recorded a 37% increase in expenditure over the last year. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s quarterly International Visitor Survey shows Chinese People spent $555 million in the year to September 2012, which for the first time puts them ahead of the United Kingdom (spending $545 million), but still well behind our largest tourist market Australia (spending $1.7 billion) […]
Domestic and international tourists spent a combined $23.9 billion in the year ended March 2013, which was $541 million, or 2.3 percent, more than the previous year.
Statistics New Zealand’s report showed spending by international tourists rose by 2.2 percent ($213 million) in the year, after a 1.4 percent lift in the previous year. This increase in spending was partly tied to strong growth in Chinese visitors.
New Zealand Promotion in China!
Of course, a number of key events helped drive tourism activity during the year, including the world premiere of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit movies.
But for China, the tourism bureau launched a Huge Promotion campaign in China, in 2011-2012 with Yao Chen, the Queen of Social networking in China.
Social media really have done excellent work as Tourism New Zealand, with the choice of the brand ambassador Yaochen in mainland China. On 20 August, Yao Chen started her five-day 100% Revival tour of New Zealand and phase one of the 100% Revive your emotions campaign plus a wedding ceremony in this country were organized. (see here)

In between filming Yaochen found the time to ‘Weibo ‘ over 70 times to her 20 million fans, the equivalent of 14 tweets each day! One of her 1st tweets was “New Zealand, the first country in the world to be kissed by the sun”.
The star experienced five emotions, relaxation, romance, happiness, excitement, and discovery on her travels through the rich and unique New Zealand landscape.
PR campaigns were launched to follow this People Buzz. 313 media articles and major Chinese newspapers are being created in
China 2nd the market for New Zealand’s Tourism!
The industry of Tourism directly employed 110,800 full-time workers, which was 5.7% of New Zealand’s total workforce.
China is now New Zealand’s second-biggest source of tourists, behind Australia with almost 1.2 million per year. Nearly 50,000 more high-class tourists from China came to New Zealand for holiday +30%.
Total Chinese travelers’ arrivals hit 210,240 – the first time they have exceeded 200,000.
That growth has continued throughout the year, rising to 236,300 in September 2013.
Tourism generated a direct contribution to NZ’s GDP of $7.3 billion, or 3.7% of the total GDP. Tourism generated $1.3 billion in GST revenue.
How to attract Chinese Tourists to your Hotel/tour operator/shops/entertainment activities?
Website
A website in Chinese is the start of every online activity. If you want to attract Chinese travelers, you need to inform them about your services in their language.
Search Engine Promotion
To get visitors to your website, using SEO ( search engine optimization) can be a very profitable investment. Appear on your keywords will let Chinese discover your website and your activity before their trip. 90% of travelers in China have already planned their trip, so you need to inform them before their travel.
SEM: Pay-per-click is especially important to get visitors. You can get fast visitors and fast customers. The only problem is the high price of Baidu. Google with Less than 4% of the market share is not used anymore in Chinese SEO strategy.
Social Media: social network sites in China are a social phenomenon, everybody is connected with friends, colleagues, or Opinion leaders. It is good for the reputation of one brand or company to have a social presence in China, a Weibo accounts for example.
Community Management To attract customers putting interesting information about your services or top things to do can be a good way to let Chinese people discover the good places to go when they travel in different cities of New Zealand.
In China, you can find more than 100 forums speaking about travel abroad and very specialized places for travel in New Zealand with tips from users.
Undercover marketing or direct instructive information are 2 possible ways to promote your company among Chinese travelers.
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