Philippines, popular destination for Chinese Tourist

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As a country relied a lot on its tourism, Philippines is a wonderful country , but because of the policital conflict with China last year, Philippines wintnessed a plummet in number of Chinese tourists for one year.

Now, things are going better, based on data from  Bureau of Immigration , 246 967 Chinese travellers went to the Philippines from January to July 2013, compared with 250,883 visitors for all of 2012. The growth of 209.1% in July 2013 alone was recorded as the months with most tremendous growth since this market experienced 359% and 211.7% increase in November and Devember 2005.

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Two times more Chinese tourist in Philippines!

China has taken the place of Japan and become the third biggest Market for Philippines, only next to South Korea and the US…The National Tourism Development plans to welcome 10 million in one year-Travellers by 2016. source

Mr. Corpuz cited tourism industry activities such as “aggressive marketing and promotional campaigns” including travel fairs, sales missions, familiarization trips, and advertising will be further pushed forward for attracting more Chinese visitors to the country.

For the government’s part, he noted, negotiating for charter flights is in the agenda for aviation service to negotiate with Chinese partners, and border formalities and visa policies “have been relaxed in favor of Chinese visitors”.

 

How Chinese make decision for travelling?

1. They Search online

Most Chinese people start their preparation for travel from searching information, especially via the web, Baidu search Engine and forums.

2. Comparison

After get information ,  they will compare all the services, prices and destination with comments from others, news on other online news on online media.

3. Pay and go travelling

Once they take their decisions, Chinese travellers will pay and enjoy their travel.

While as a company in tourism from Phillipines, how can you get Chinese customers flood to your destination? Nowadays, there are two main ways,

Partnership with local agencies

It can help you to get customers quite easily and save you a lot of effort in customers’ visa, booking air tickets, etc.

However, local agencies won’t let you earn a lot by keeping most profit into their pockets and very harsh on service terms. Usually they have very special condition on the service and security.

Another weak point for most foreign tour operators and tourism destinations is the negotiation with the Chinese local agencies, language is a barrier while those agencies are usually big companies who only care about partners who can talk with them face to face and having contact in China mainland.

Promotion by yourself.

If you want to keep most profit with you, self-promotion is your better choice. Through self promotion, you can directly reach and communicate your customers; understand their needs; keep most profit; and what’s most important, it’s very convenient to do it, especially when you take online solution.

Internet is very important in the decision process!

Chinese people are likely to trust the word from someone quite close to their situation in real life, that’s why they search and trust the information they found online, especially good comments from people who already been there.

The role of the Internet is the Key for companies who want to get Chinese tourists, the use of online marketing tools is nothing to sneeze at and the good news is it’s highly cost-efficient.

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Solutions to attract Chinese Tourist in Philippines

In fact, Marketing is not only a cost-efficient way to increase the awareness of an tour operation, hotel or resort… to cover and get the trust from your Chinese clients are very important.

According to our experience, the Top Efficient ways are

1. Official website + SEO/SEM

A website in Chinese is very important, but it is only one step to show you in front of customers.

Of course, hosting in China, and a tailor-made design to your clients’ taste are important to get good image… and clear navigation

Caution!

A nice website without visitors is a pure waste of budget.  And via SEO and SEM, the most efficient solution to get quality traffic, you can bring your customers to see your website, and let website turn traffic into your customers.

See more about our offer in SEO

2. Social networks

Internet has a wide and deep influence on Chinese citizens. Most time, tourists in China, especially outbound tourists spend much time on on social networks, like Weibo and WeChat every day.

Communicating on Weibo and WeChat starts from four basic steps: opening an account, obtaining certifications, publishing interesting content, interacting with your potential customers to build a community.

Nowadays, Sina Weibo is a very powerful tool to lift both the awareness and iamge of your company in China; the number of fans can add up quickly and allows you to spread your offer to up to 300 million people according to figures reported on Weibo, and it’s design is very suitable for people to see the pictures which is the key to leave a wonderful impression on Chinese people.

See more about our offer in  Social Media

3. Using KOL

KOLs (Key Opinion Leader) or stars have the ability to influence a lot of Chinese tourists with their communities and their fans’ fans network …

These online leaders are followed by millions of people , just imagine one day, your pictures appear on their accounts…This kind of campaign can be very profitable if it is well designed and executed.

4. PR (Press Relations)

PR campaign in China is important to influence travellers . It allows you to promote your service to reach a wide variety of Chinese citizens. This communication is should be with rich visuals or feeds backs and testimonials from people who have visited the country.

5. Viral marketing

The social network website in China give  fast information. And once it turns into a big buzz, Chinese netizens can have interest to know more about that and even sometimes media will report that.

It can greatly increase the brand awareness in a very short time.

 

Above are the basic solutions for promoting your company in China. If you own a small business, I’ll advise to start with one of them. If you have a big plan, it’ll be much better and suitable to take a integrated strategy.