"EXCELLENT NEW HANDBOOK OFFERS KEYS TO CHINESE MARKET"

Bruce Taylor
Travel Industry Journalist
bbt online (www.bbt.be)
Brussels

13 September 2005

"If you’re already doing business with China, planning to do so or just thinking about it, keep on reading BBT Online because every month we have something new and interesting on the waking giant.

This month, apart from our Guest Writer from Destination China, it’s this review of a market guide to China called The China Outbound Travel Handbook 2005. It’s an excellent introduction to an amazingly complex market and is a co-production between two consultancies – DPS Consulting on the ground in China and Roy Graff of CContact in London, a former business development manager & e-commerce director for Gullivers Travel Associates who has himself spent three years in China.

The handbook is relevant to every sector of the tourism business – destinations (both national & regional), transport companies, inbound operators, accommodation providers etc, whatever the country in Europe. It contains lots of tips and practical advice for suppliers and is written in a down-to-earth style, with a minimum of meaningless statistics. In fact one of the comments I most liked was: ”Statistics on China are, in a word, confusing”!

It outlines the perils of operating in China and the need for local help – to ensure people belong to the companies they say they do; that contracts are right and databases which constantly change are up-to-date, to check license numbers etc. Things are not always what they appear in China. It talks about the truth behind many official visits and even group business visits; about the new phenomenon of private group travel; about the expectations and experiences of the Chinese in Europe and the scope for media promotions. There’s also a useful section on the shortcomings & challenges of various exhibitions and much more.

To have a point of comparison I downloaded VisitBritain’s 20 page Leisure Market Profile to China free of charge. It was OK, but superficial and certainly didn’t go into the market in the same depth. As a destination marketer, I would prefer to pay the £70 for the electronic edition of the Handbook, and also have monthly updates & news from this fast changing market, rather than a free once a year guide from a National Tourism Organisation.

The tragedy of course is that, like VisitBritain, most European destinations are also collecting the same type of market information and intelligence. They would be a lot better off doing a deal with the China Handbook for translation (where necessary) and the addition of a couple of country-specific pages. The vast majority of the material is relevant to all (European) destinations and their travel industry partners. The difference is in the marketing - how they interpret it and what action they take.

If they were to work with the Handbook and use one set of information, it would then leave the marketers more time and resources to concentrate on the daunting task of selling their destinations to a massive and growing market of 150 million middle class Chinese with the income to travel abroad. To date, Europe only accounts for 3% of China’s outbound market and not one European destination is in China’s top 10."