Historically the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the busiest outbound tourism periods as the period includes both the Mid-Autumn Festival and China National Day, both of which are national holidays. This results in many Chinese citizens combining the national holiday days with work holidays to take one week of holiday.
Whilst the China outbound tourism market, in general, still remains some way away from where it was in 2019, this year’s Mid-Autumn Festival could have provided an excellent opportunity for inspiration for Western hotels to actively market themselves to Chinese audiences currently – positioning themselves perfectly for the recovery.
Eric Zhuang, Chief Strategy Officer at DidaTravel, states “this Mid-Autumn Festival period has been a big missed opportunity for most Western hotels as generally speaking they haven’t yet reactivated their sales & marketing efforts when it comes to Chinese outbound travellers. By doing so they are basically risking missing out on the recovery which is already underway, allowing competitors to capture their market share.”
Reactivating China sales will require more than simply re-employing Chinese speaking sales & marketing teams however, points out Eric, “technology plays an ever increasing important role in reaching Chinese travellers via B2B2C sales distribution channels and such technology solutions have evolved significantly since 2019. This requires more than just switching back on your old tech solutions and it is important to point out that the nature of the local sales market has changed too. Many B2B2C sellers are now selling in a very different way and thus require different types of content and pricing.”
Tags: Eric Zhuang, DidaTravel, Western hotels
