Blog helps tourism industry better understand Chinese tourists

Australian learning and development company, TravConsult, has just launched an interactive educational blog, called TravConsult China, in order to help tourism organizations, businesses, tourism professionals, and academics globally to better understand Chinese tourists.

With Chinese tourists being increasingly viewed as an important and growing market for many destinations around the world, tourism organizations have realized they have to work smarter and more strategically to gain, maintain, and increase their share of the Chinese market share, and education and knowledge are being seen as the key to these outcomes.

Trevor Lee, TravConsult’s managing director said, “The idea for the blog came about through feedback from senior managers in tourism and their front-line staff saying that they wanted to learn more about the growing Chinese tourism market and Chinese tourists and either didn’t know where to find relevant information or didn’t have the time to do the research.”

Lee continued saying, “Managers would come up to us at the end of our workshops and ask if we could recommend websites or books for them to learn more about Chinese culture, Chinese language, and Chinese tourists. Often, sales directors would ask us for recommended texts or websites on how to do business in China and Chinese business etiquette. We then made the decision to develop a non-commercial, one-stop site that could help them all.”

TravConsult’s China blog, which can be found at www.travconsultchina.blogspot.com , includes the latest tourism, hospitality, and business news from China, general news from China, links to useful websites from around the world on outbound tourism from China, Chinese gaming & casino behavior, and doing business in China. There are interactive Chinese language tools and an audio-dictionary for people who would like to learn some words & expressions in Mandarin, as well as a calendar of upcoming events around the world that focus on Chinese tourism and trade. Recommended reading, viewing, and listening materials on China are on the blog, in addition to seven-day weather forecasts for Beijing and several other major cities and an interactive on-line game of Mah-jong; the blog is totally free and is being updated 24/7.

Lee concluded saying, “We have just reviewed all submissions for this year’s Chinese Tourists Welcoming Awards in Beijing taking place on April 22 and submitted our recommendations for the final positions. Applications have come from China, Helsinki, Jamaica, Los Angeles, Dubai, Mexico, Thailand, Vienna, British Virgin Islands, Tanzania, Germany, Portugal, Egypt, Switzerland, and several other destinations. Those destinations keeping up to date with developments in outbound tourism from China and who are investing in ongoing learning into China, its culture, and people, will be the ones who profit the most from the Chinese tourism market.”

TravConsult won the Gold Award for Service Quality and Human Resource Development at the Chinese Tourists Welcoming Awards in Beijing last year and are considered experts in educating organizations on looking after Chinese tourists. Their Chinese Culture and Customer Service Workshops have been utilized by all sectors of the tourism industry, and most recently they were presented with the inaugural China Outbound Tourism Quality Label, one of only four organizations in the world to be certified for their knowledge of the special needs and expectations of Chinese tourists. Trevor and TravConsult co-founder, Lilly Choi-Lee, are also members of the invitation-only China Outbound Tourism Experts Network consisting of 20 academics and tourism consultants from China, Hong Kong, Germany, the United Kingdom, the USA, and Australia.