Inbound adventuring

Tourists give China a miss, efforts are under way to find out why

There is a huge increase in Chinese tourists shopping in Oxford Street, London, or strolling in Stratford-upon-Avon, part of a storied wave of outbound tourists, but China is seeing a drop in tourists from around the world enjoying its delights.

China's inbound tourists reached 129.08 million last year, a large number but still down 2.51 percent year-on-year, according to a report from the China Tourism Academy. The inbound sector has seen declines in visitor numbers and the amount of money spent by visitors.

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Beijing received 2.36 million overseas visitors from January to July, a drop of 5.9 percent compared with the same period last year, the capital's statistics bureau says.

The China Tourism Academy says Chinese tourists spent $47 billion more overseas than foreign visitors spent in China in the first half of the year. This means China has the largest tourism trade deficit of any country.

As a result, China's tourism officials are looking for new, effective ways to attract more overseas tourists. That involves taking a very close look at image and message and using research tools and experts to get to the bottom of what tourists from the United Kingdom and elsewhere really want.

Officials held an exhaustive search in the UK for a new slogan that would hit home there.

"Charming China: Your Cup of Tea", the winner, is one that officials hope will be just the right cup of tea for Britons. It was created by a British woman and beat hundreds of other entries.

"We launched a slogan competition campaign in the summer for seven weeks to select the best Chinese tourism slogan in UK," says Kuang Lin, director of the China National Tourism Administration's London office.

"We cooperated with Travel Bulletin to contact more than 8,000 travel agencies in the UK to join the competition. We informed travel experts about the competition using 24,000 e-mails, and published the news in travel magazines."

Kuang says the winner is elegant, and the words concise, catchy and full of British charm and wit, adding that "the industry experts also highly praised it".

"We also asked a professional organization to take a video in the streets of London with the slogan and to put it on social media like YouTube.

"At the end of August we launched an event called China Tourism Night, and this video and slogan both won lots of praise."

But this is just part of the London office's efforts. Kuang, who has done a lot of research on China's tourism image, says that to find reasons behind the decline and increase in inbound tourists, the London office joined with the tourism management department of the University of Surrey to conduct a survey of British perceptions of China's national tourism market.

This project will use professional research methodology with a well-structured questionnaire to achieve an accurate marketing plan and good results.