China's come here - go away with foreigners
Trip Start
Jul 01, 2008
1
36
54
Trip End
Nov 31, 2009
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Beijing,
China
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
ps strangely people from my country rate as the biggest spenders in China. Could it be they are ripped off by taxi drivers and guides??
Beijing Eyes Olympic Bounce
By JASON LEOW and LORETTA CHAO
BEIJING -- Beijing officials are looking to leverage the publicity of the Olympics to draw more Western travelers and help breathe new life into the Chinese capital's tourism industry.
At the core of the new effort is a television advertising campaign on the U.S. and international channels of Time Warner Inc.'s CNN network, and on the British Broadcasting Corp.'s World News channel. That TV campaign, which began in July ahead of the Beijing Games and which officials plan to continue till the end of the year, highlights the capital's new icons of modernity -- like the angular China Central Television Tower -- alongside ancient symbols like the Great Wall and exhorts visitors to "be part of Beijing and enjoy the Olympics."
Officials plan to continue using the Olympics theme as part of their ads, but they are still searching for ways to better attract Western tourists, says Xiong Yumei, the Beijing Tourism Administration's deputy director.
"We know what we have to offer, but we want to know what people outside of China are interested in [so that we can] show them what they want to see," says Ms. Xiong. She says the capital needs a tagline that could better appeal to foreigners, and that also addresses misunderstandings that she thinks Westerners have about China. "China understands the world, but the world doesn't understand China," she says.
The pattern of tourism in Beijing is important for the rest of the country because foreign visitors often use the capital as a gateway for travel to other parts of China.
Beijing saw tourism slump ahead of the Olympics this year, due partly to violence in Tibetan regions that caused bad publicity and security concerns. The Sichuan earthquake in May also hurt tourism, as did the Chinese government's stricter visa regulations ahead of the Beijing Games. Those restrictions were designed to keep out terrorists and protestors, but also discouraged both business and leisure travel in recent months.
China's success in reviving tourism growth matters for global hospitality companies that have made big bets on China's market. InterContinental Hotels Group PLC expects to open its 100th hotel in China this year and has 16 hotels in Beijing, while Marriott International Inc. plans to have at least 62 hotels in China by 2012.
Focusing on Western tourists is a departure for China, which traditionally has drawn its biggest share of tourists from South Korea and Japan, according to government data. But Western travelers have become a growing force in the country, and, according to at least one survey, spend more than other visitors.
Last year, Americans were the fourth-largest group of foreign tourists, after South Koreans, Japanese and Russians. But the numbers of Western visitors is growing quickly. American arrivals to China last year were 70% higher than in 2002, while the number of British visitors jumped 76% and the number of Australians doubled. Japanese arrivals during the period, by contrast, grew 36%.
Foreign tourists accounted for almost a third of China's nearly $160 billion in tourism revenue last year, government numbers show. A survey by Visa Inc., released in August, shows New Zealanders and Australians are the heftiest spenders among China's foreign visitors: 24% of New Zealanders and 17% of Australians, among more than 3,000 survey respondents, said they spent over $5,000 on their most-recent China trip.
Shaun Rein, head of Shanghai-based China Market Research Group, says that Beijing hotels will remain hard hit until business travel returns to normal some time next year. Business conferences and exhibitions that usually bring visitors to the city have been relocated to other areas because of the Olympics.
Mr. Rein says "lingering regulations enacted to counteract potential security risks" will continue to damp travel until those rules are lifted.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122031498533889053.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
