Emerging Tourist Markets and the Internet
According to the latest research made by Nielsen, Internet is the favourite means of Chinese when searching for tourist information in their effort to choose their holiday destination.
According always to Nielsen, 61% of the Chinese who travelled for leisure have searched the basic information for their destination on the web and 48% of those have consulted interactive websites like Rating Sites, Forums, Social Media, Blogs etc to confirm that the information found on the destination’s official sites are valid.
As a result of the same research it is mentioned that the comments and experiences shared on the internet from other travellers largely affect the new travellers’ decision. The research also showed that the traditional travel agents are only involved in two out of the five trips that Chinese travellers are undertaking. Furthermore, 70% remember the online destination advertisements more than the other means of communication and 40% remember the corresponding advertisements from magazines, newspapers, radio and even television.
As a conclusion from the Nielsen research, a clear Online Marketing Policy need to be implemented urgently in order to attract a piece of the pie of approximately 50 million Chinese travellers (official statistics of 2008) who are willing to meet new cultures and explore new destinations. This policy is necessary not only to be implemented by government agencies but is even more importantly by the private sector. This is only achieved through specialized training programs which in Cyprus are subsidized by the Human Resource Development Authority.
What do we do as a destination to attract the interest of the “Red Dragon”? If we take into consideration that by 2013 China will be the first English speaking country worldwide, then as a destination with a strong presence of the English language we should enhance our efforts of attracting Chinese tourists. The different tourist destinations in Cyprus should take action online and reinvent their internet sites so as to become more interactive and human oriented. The Regional Boards of Tourism should at last co operate with the private sector and the professional associations in order to convert their websites into one stop shopping site. Their lack of presence at this moment it only achieves the diversion of internet visitors into the websites of competitors with the meaning of “if you don’t have it, I buy from somebody else”. Cyprus Tourism Organisation (CTO) cannot and should not play this role since the diversity of our resorts should be marketed by the resorts and this is what Brussels is urging on the framework of the programs for Regional Development. Nevertheless the CTO has already started implementing online PR policy in the different Social Media.
In addition, we should mention here the very important role of the airlines. In the case of China we have the chance due to our geographical location to become a stop over to Europe. The millions of Chinese travellers could stay for one week in Cyprus and one week in any other European country either on their arrival or departure of their country. This can be achieved only with a strong air transport policy on behalf of the government agencies and other bodies.
From the Nielsen research we conclude that the sterile protocols of tourist agreements, such as the one signed on the 13th of May by the Minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism Mr Antonis Paschalides, are useless unless they are followed by feasible and state blessing B2B agreements.
Business to business agreements can be accomplished with the presence of Cypriot tourist businessmen on the framework of events such as the professional tourist exhibition China Outbound Travel Trade Market (www.cottm.com) which takes place in Beijing every spring (for 2010 it will take place from 28th to 30th April).