Chinese Social Network for Tourism (case of Australia)

Online, mobile and social media campaigns to reach, engage and target consumers with “the idea of an Australian holiday”.

Tourism Australia (TA) is seeking a Chinese IT and media agency to help it spearhead a new marketing campaign to attract more Chinese tourists to holiday in Australia.

Chinese tourism is already the fastest growing and most valuable inbound market to Australia: about 789,000 Chinese tourists visited Australia in the year to September 2014 – up ten per cent from the year before – and they spent a whopping $5.4 billion.

Chinese visitors eclipsed visitor numbers from every other country, except New Zealand, and they stayed longer and significantly outspent tourists from every other country.

It’s a lucrative market that is poised to become even more profitable in years to come. Figures recently released by Tourism Australia suggest that annual spending by Chinese visitors to Australia could rise to $13 billion annually by 2020 and TA wants to ensure numbers continue to build.

It launched the consumer website Australia.cn in 2012, which included Sina Weibo.

In November last year it ran a six-day media campaign on Weibo following the country’s president, Xi Jinping and his wife as they toured around Australia. Named ‘Dada’s Visit to Australia’ (the nickname the Chinese have given their president, like papa) the campaign focused on Australian food and culture as the presidential couple travelled to Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane and Tasmania.

The campaign also got interactive by asking Chinese people living in Australia or who had visited the country to make travel and food recommendations as the couple journeyed. The campaign attracted 120 million visitors to TA’s Weibo website and secured a 300 per cent increase in traffic.

Food and wine were also the focus during a Tourism Australia dinner for 400 “influencers” held in Shanghai last November which showcased Australian food and wine.

“If we reflect on where Chinese people are coming from – a Confucian mono-culture with a totalitarian government, and crowded mega-cities with polluted skies and unsafe water – it should come as no surprise to learn that as well as visiting our natural wonders, they will also want to experience our relaxing, healthy, lifestyle.”

“Although famous brand items can be purchased in any large city in China, items purchased abroad accrue more face and are less likely to be fake. They will also want to buy local iconic products – particularly those associated with native flora and fauna,”