Tag Archives: Niuyue Mag
Pierre Gervois, the leading expert on marketing to Chinese inbound tourists in the U.S. will be in New York on Oct 18, 2012 for meetings with travel and tourism industry professionals.
October 3, 2012 · 10:09 am
Niuyue Cap on the head, Shanghai Travelers’ Club “Platinum” Card in hand, Wealthy Chinese tourists arrive in New York City
At the 5th avenue Cartier Flagship store, a Chinese customer in Gucci flip flops, Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt and a Niuyue Mag Cap on his head is buying three gold “Tank” watches incrusted with diamonds “One for me, one for my wife, and one for my daughter, who is studying in Chicago”, he says with a big smile. “I’m also platinum member of the Shanghai Travelers’ Club”, he added ,“that gives me a VIP welcome in most of luxury stores here”.
Cultural training is imperative for New York-based luxury flagship store employees to build trust among affluent Chinese tourists and creating a custom experience for this group of travelers will help marketers gain brand loyalists, experts say.
Many luxury brands are focusing marketing efforts to Chinese consumers back at home, but with a rising wave of Chinese tourists coming to New York, it is important that brands cater to this group. Luxury marketers need to be more proactive to reach Chinese travelers by training employees and partnering with high-end travel services.
“New York flagships should be more aggressive in inviting and giving a fabulous experience to Chinese tourists,” said Milton Pedraza, CEO of the Luxury Institute, New York. “The city seems to be behind in attracting and nurturing Chinese consumers.
“New York has been slow to appeal to Chinese tourists, even though there is such as large Chinese population in the city,” he said.
“Retailers need to create personal, emotional connections with these consumers by nurturing them and caring for them, which will create a lasting impression.”
In the capital cities of European countries, luxury flagship stores get 50 percent of their value from Chinese tourists, per Mr. Pedraza.
Europeans have been smart in the way they care for Chinese tourists, who tend to buy in volume on shopping trips.
Meanwhile, the United States has not been as open to tourists in its efforts and may have suffered, given the economic times.
According to Pierre Gervois, author of “How U.S. Retail, Travel and Hospitality Industries Can Attract Affluent Chinese Tourists”, “The U.S. travel and tourism industry has understood the financial power of the new generation of affluent Chinese inbound tourists, and how it can give a boost to the country’s economy, but needs to improve the way Chinese visitors are welcomed and understand better the intercultural issues of marketing”
In the past, European tourists were key for New York-based retailers, but tourism from Europe is on the decline. Travelers from China are now the largest group of tourists in New York, and Indian tourists are another group to look out for in the next decade.
To get Chinese consumers into New York flagship stores, luxury brands should partner with high-end hotels, tour operators and restaurants to keep the brand top-of-mind, according to Mr. Pedraza.
But the marketing strategy for luxury retailers also starts in China, when affluent Chinese travelers are planning their NYC shopping trip, and use Chinese social media networks such as Niuyue Mag, with 200,000 registered members, giving shopping tips and specific insights to Chinese shoppers.
Also airports, limos and hotel concierges play a major role in influencing affluent Chinese tourists since these are all stops on the journey to New York.
“There is no question that luxury brands should be using print and their Web sites to attract tourists to their New York stores by showing the experience that they can expect,” Mr. Pedraza said.
“The travel industry is also a huge opportunity,” he said. “Luxury brands have to romance travel agents to get on the map within the travel industry.”
“Brands need to do a better job at creating these partnerships with travel-oriented brands.”
Once in-store, affluent Chinese tourists will need to be made comfortable. To do so, New York flagship stores should start by training their staff on the Chinese culture and traditions.
Stores should have, at minimum, Mandarin-speaking employees and may also want to train in other dialects from Asia.
“Employees should be well-educated in relationship building, not just to process tourist transactions, but to develop longtime relationships with the brand,” Mr. Pedraza said.
“There are luxury brand stores in Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong, so these tourist transactions are not a one-shot deal,” he said. “They can also be relationship building.”
Luxury retailers should be aware of the Chinese holiday calendar to understand buying habits during certain holidays and target Chinese consumers for in-store gift buying, per Ken Morris, principal at Boston Retail Partners, Boston.
The holiday calendar may also hint at the time when Chinese tourists are more likely to travel.
Training sales associates on cultural greetings can quickly build trust with incoming tourists and encourage foot traffic.
Stores should also offer in-store shipping options so that Chinese consumers can ship items home. This will eliminate the need to pay sales tax and leave the customer more room in their luggage, per Mr. Morris.
“Not only is the size of the luxury market in China significant, but it continues to grow with a burgeoning middle class aspiring to own luxury brands to demonstrate their wealth,” Mr. Morris said.
“New York is a unique, international city where tourists can readily find bilingual associates,” he said. “By focusing on hiring multilingual staff, a retailer has the opportunity to offer exceptional customer service and make the customer comfortable shopping in the store.”
Source: Chinese Tourists Blog
Filed under New York
From complimentary Chinese tea to social media marketing, U.S. hotels try hard to entice more Chinese guests
Major hotel brands are bending over backward to cater to the needs of the world’s most sought-after traveler: the Chinese tourist.
Now arriving on American shores in unprecedented numbers thanks to a streamlined visa process and a rising Chinese middle class, Chinese tourists are being treated to the comforts of home when they check in at the front desk. That means tea in rooms, congee for breakfast and Mandarin-speaking hotel employees.
Chinese “welcome programs” at chains like the Marriott and Hilton even address delicate cultural differences: No Chinese tour group should be placed on a floor containing the number four, which sounds like the word for death in Mandarin.
“They’re very relieved, like finally somebody’s doing these things that make sense,” said Robert Armstrong, a sales manager who handles bookings for Chinese travelers at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York.
More than a million Chinese visited the US in 2011, contributing more than US$5.7 billion ($7.2 billion) to the economy. That’s up 36 per cent from 2010, according to the Department of Commerce. By 2016, that figure is expected to reach 2.6 million Chinese.
In a striking departure from the traditional Chinese business traveler, a growing number of them are coming to America for fun – with lots of cash. (The average Chinese visitor spends more than US$6000 per trip.)
“Chinese Social Media networks are very important to help Chinese travelers to choose their hotel in the U.S.” said Pierre Gervois, Chief Executive Officer of China Elite Focus, a digital marketing agency based in Shanghai and Hong Kong. “New social media networks focused about travel in the United States have emerged last year, and are now very popular, such as Luxury Hotels of America (美国奢侈酒店), or Niuyue Mag (纽约志), and VIP Golf USA (美国VIP贵宾高尔夫). These social media networks allow Chinese travelers to ask for advice to 
other Chinese tourists coming back from the U.S., and also to rate hotels, golf courses, and retail stores. They are much more influent than travel agencies.”
And so hotels are competing to win the hearts of the Chinese. That may take the form of slippers and a tea kettle in the room or a Mandarin-speaking employee at the front desk.
“They drink tea. Eastern style, everything cold,” explained Charlie Shao, president of Galaxy Tours, a New York City-based Chinese tour agency. “They don’t walk inside the room with bare feet.”
It’s rare that Shao has to ask hotels for anything anymore. Marriott International, for example, now offers several Chinese breakfasts, depending upon which region of China the traveler hails from: there are salted duck eggs and pickled vegetables for eastern Chinese, for example, and dim sum and sliced pig’s liver for the southerners.
Major chains are also training employees to avoid cultural missteps that would offend a Chinese visitor. Superstition is a big one: Red is considered a lucky colour, along with the number eight, which signifies wealth. The colour white, meanwhile, is frowned upon.
Failing to respect the pecking order in a Chinese group is another common blunder.
“We try to make sure nobody’s on a higher floor than their boss,” Armstrong said. “Even if the boss is on a beautiful suite on the eighth floor, if the assistant is in a standard room on the 38th floor, it doesn’t translate.”
The race is also on to build loyalty within China’s borders. Last year, Starwood Hotels, which has a Chinese “specialist” at each American hotel, relocated its senior leadership team to China for a month. The Ritz-Carlton rotates general managers and other hotel staff into its Chinese hotels for three-year stints at a time. And both chains are banking on the success of their customer rewards programs, which have been a big hit in China.
“It’s important for our leaders to understand what’s going on there at a more personal level than just the statistics,” said Clayton Ruebensaal, vice president of marketing for the Ritz. “Everybody’s going after this market because of the sheer volume of luxury customers. At the same time, it’s a very crowded landscape.”
In response to the surge in Chinese visitors, the State Department decided earlier this year to spend US$22 million on new facilities in several Chinese cities and add about 50 officers to process visa applications. And in February, the US government said Chinese visitors who had obtained an American visa within the last four years did not have to reapply in person but could apply via courier.
As a result, visa interview wait times in China are just under a week.
But some experts say the US still lags far behind other countries, especially in Europe, when it comes to attracting Chinese tourists. America is woefully ill-prepared to welcome China at an industry-wide level, especially at restaurants and major attractions, said Rich Harrill, director of the Sloan Foundation Travel & Tourism Industry Centre at the University of South Carolina.
“We’re not as ready as we should be,” Harrill said.
“We don’t have the language skills. We have an opportunity to be on the ground floor of something that could be very, very big.”
Filed under USA
New York City luxury retailers are waiting for more wealthy Chinese shoppers
Over five days in January, a group of visitors to New York was treated to a private concert with the pianist Lang Lang at the Montblanc store, cocktails and a fashion show attended by the designers Oscar de la Renta and Diane Von Furstenberg, and a tour of Estée Lauder’s original office. They were not celebrities. They were not government officials. They were Chinese tourists with a lot of money.
Though luxury brands started opening stores in Beijing and Shanghai years ago, Chinese shoppers still spend more on luxury products abroad than they do at home, according to the consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. Price is the major reason: Because of China’s taxes, luxury products are about a third cheaper in the United States and elsewhere.
European luxury stores have been catering to Chinese tourists for years. Now high-end retailers in the United States are pulling out their Mandarin phrase books and trying to convince Chinese visitors that Americans can do luxury, too.
“What started as a trickle has now become a flow,” said the vice president of the antiques store Macklowe Gallery, Ben Macklowe, who recently sold a Tiffany lamp that cost in the low six figures to a Shanghai visitor. “There’s been prosperity across so much of Asia that you’re starting to see it much more in the profile of the tourist on Madison Avenue.”
A record number of Chinese visited the United States last year — nearly 1.1 million — and the country accounts for one of the top-growing tourist groups here, according to the Commerce Department. The number of visitors is expected to almost double by 2014, according to the U.S. Travel Association. Chinese visitors spend about $6,000 each on every visit here, versus the $4,000 that visitors from other countries spend on average, the association says, and their top activity is shopping.
Although some tourists spend money on Disney trinkets and at the outlet malls they have traditionally frequented, luxury brand purchases are surging in part because American stores carry a broader range of products than their counterparts in China, said Julia Zhu, consulting director for Frost & Sullivan.
Tiffany, which made almost a quarter of its United States revenue last year from foreign tourists, has added Mandarin-speaking sales staff to its major stores, as has Burberry, where more than half of sales at its flagship stores are to tourists. Representatives from Tourneau’s Manhattan office recently accompanied New York City officials on a visit to China to encourage more tourism in the city.
The very popular Chinese social media network “Niuyue Mag” (纽约志), used by the young and affluent Chinese tourists preparing their trip to New York City had also a role in promoting the Big Apple as a major luxury shopping destination. According to Sandra Ming, analyst at China Elite Focus, “the impact of Niuyue Mag has been tremendous as it’s for now the only one media available in China exclusively about the planning of a shopping trip in New York City”
At its United States stores, Montblanc sells Year of the Dragon pens and has staff members who speak Mandarin and Cantonese. It is also printing Chinese-language brochures about its products and selling wallets sized for Chinese currency.
Despite having more than 100 stores in China, Montblanc is going after Chinese shoppers on vacation abroad. “Yes, we are in the major cities, but when you travel, you’re in the mood to enjoy and experience the moment,” said Jan-Patrick Schmitz, chief executive of Montblanc North America. “We certainly will do more and more marketing toward them.”
Retailers in the United States lag behind other countries. Part of that is because of visa issues; it is easier for Chinese residents to get visas to Europe. High-end American retailers like Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale’s are urging the government to speed up the process here. President Obama said in January that he planned to increase visa-processing capacity from emerging markets like China and Brazil by 40 percent this year.
The American stores also have to overcome an idea that luxury can come only from the old world.
“The European brands, they see prestige, history, heritage,” said Sunny Wong, group managing director of Trinity, a company that owns and operates high-end European retail brands in China. American brands, by contrast, are seen as “contemporary, lifestyle” rather than pure luxury, he said.
American retailers are racing to prove Mr. Wong wrong.
Filed under New York
Will Chinese tourists save the American economy?
With easing travel restrictions and growing spending power, American politicians and businesspeople look to the increasing number of Chinese travelers to speed economic recovery.
Amid the commotion of shuffling lines and muffled voices, Tina Tian sits in disbelief outside the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. Her head hung low, Tian’s phone rings. She answers her father’s call with a sigh of resignation.
Five years later, Tian still remembers the disappointment of being denied an entry visa to visit the United States.
“I want to visit America because it is a superpower,” Tian says, now a recent college graduate from Sichuan University. Despite being denied a visa twice, Tian remains determined. “I am a big Lakers fan, I watch Gossip Girls and love to drink Starbucks. My daily life is very influenced by the United States and that is why I want to visit.”
Though Tian has yet to make the trip, Chinese travelers are landing at U.S. airports in record numbers. In 2011, over one million travelers from the Mainland arrived in the U.S., with hundreds of thousands more pouring in from Taiwan and Hong Kong. With expanding incomes and an eagerness to venture abroad, American politicians and businesses are lining up to greet Chinese tourists at the gates.
Speaking at Disney World in February, President Obama announced his vision to expand international tourism as a means to economic recovery.
“Every year, tens of millions of tourists from all over the world come and visit America,” Obama said. “And the more folks who visit America, the more Americans we get back to work.” With the Department of Commerce estimating that Chinese and Brazilian travelers spend an average of $6,000 per visit, ensuring the U.S. is a top travel destination is more national priority than marketing material.
For Tian, that means the third time may be a charm. Obama’s plan included several steps for increasing access to the U.S., including simplifying and accelerating non-immigrant visa processes, making the Global Entry Program permanent and nominating Taiwan to the Visa Waiver Program. The bottom line for the President’s push?
“We need to help businesses all across the country grow and create jobs; compete and win.”
The U.S. Department of Commerce estimates that arrivals from China will increase by approximately 274% between 2012 and 2016. Last year, arrivals from China were estimated at 1,098,000 and 294,000 from Taiwan. If Taiwan is accepted into the visa waiver program, numbers are expected to rise even more as citizens would be eligible to travel to U.S. territories for 90 days without a visa.
With that number expected to top 3 million visitors from China by 2016, American businesses are preparing for their arrival in a big way.
“The number one reason Chinese tourists come to the U.S. is for shopping,” says Pierre Gervois, President and CEO of China Elite Focus, an agency specializing in wealthy Chinese outbound tourism.
This statement holds true as Chinese travelers spent $7.2 billion abroad on luxury goods, a 29% increase from the $5.6 billion last year just during the weeklong Spring Festival holiday.
“The second reason,” Gervois continues, “is that the U.S. is well known for their movie stars and Hollywood scenes and they want to do a lot of sight seeing.”
Carol Martinez, spokesperson from the Los Angeles Convention and Visitor Authority, concurs as she says that significant focus is put on accommodating outbound Chinese tourists through measures like setting up Chinese boarding services at major attraction sites. Martinez highlights that the California Travel and Tourism Commission opened tourism promotion offices in Shanghai and Beijing.
Another compelling reason: travel to the U.S. can act as a social status marker for Chinese and Taiwanese.
“If you can afford to visit and purchase many goods from the U.S., it makes a statement that you are living a good life,” says Nancy Cheng, a Taiwan native.
In 2003, the U.S. opened the Group Visa Program for Chinese travelers, making it far easier for large tour groups, athletic teams, and entertainment groups to enter the country. The most important trend, however, is that visitors from China are beginning to travel independently. Cheng notes this phenomenon as, “a perfect example of xuan fu, which means to show off your wealth.”
“The second wave of China’s outbound tourism has started, with more self-organized travelers slowing down and spreading further afield,” says Dr. Georg Wolfgang, Director of the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute. “Increasingly travel-savvy and globally connected, below 45 years and green, the new Chinese tourist is arriving in exotic locations and staying for more than just a snapshot.”
These “new” Chinese tourists are setting a new standard for Chinese outbound tourism and are eager to explore forms of non-traditional tourism.
Ecotourism, increasingly popular with Western tourists, is also catching on with Chinese. The emphasis of nature immersion and outdoor adventures in locations such as Hawaii and Alaska is becoming more appealing as some Chinese look to escape from the hardships of modern urban living.
Mike McCartney, president of the Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA), forecasts that the number of Chinese visitors to Hawaii will increase annually by 20% from 2012 to 2014, with those who visit consisting largely of young affluent individuals. For this reason, outdoors activities such as golfing, boating, yachting and surfing are being promoted and emphasized in their marketing efforts.
“Mass tourists will stay on the beaten track, but new Chinese tourists can be attracted to lesser known places if they are provided with a good reason to go there which translates again into prestige,” Wolfgang says. “Connecting destinations with the history of overseas Chinese living in that area might also be a good starting point.”
The exponential rise in Chinese tourists has also positively affected the EB-5 and the proposed EB-6 Visa programs. Intended to attract foreign investors, the EB-5 visa program provides foreign nationals a way to gain a green card for a minimum of $500,000 investment for a targeted employment area within the U.S. The program has created 31,000 jobs and has attracted over $1.5 billion in investments through mainly private companies since its inception. With a surge of Chinese tourists in the U.S., hopes are that the number of applicants for the EB-5 and EB-6 programs will also increase.
While statistics rise for conventional tourist arrivals, there has been a parallel spike in other “grey” forms of travel. “Birth tourism,” as it has been labeled, sees wealthy pregnant women travel to birth their babies in foreign countries. Potentially living in the country for months before delivery, babies birthed in the U.S. provide two benefits as seen by these Chinese parents: instant U.S. citizenship and a way around China’s pesky one-child policy.
China has already overtaken Italy, Japan, France and the United Kingdom in terms of international tourist spending. In 2010, the average travel spending per Chinese visitor to the U.S. was at $6,243 followed by India at $6,131 and Brazil at $4,940, while European countries peaked at $3,132. The flood of Chinese outbound tourists offers an obvious potential cash flow. With President Obama acknowledging the need to facilitate travel, the U.S. can anticipate more Chinese tourists in more places across the country.
“The primary motivation to travel to the U.S., besides business and visiting friends and relatives, is to gain prestige and to learn,” Wolfgang notes. “To attract Chinese visitors, these two aspects have to be emphasized, ‘Be the most famous, oldest, greatest in your field and provide a mix of entertainment and education.’”
It should only be a matter of time before Tian is sipping Starbucks at her first Lakers game.
Article by Chia-Ling Melody Yuan
Filed under USA
Only 5% of US hotels websites have a Chinese version
Chinese travelers are visiting the United States in increasingly large numbers -and will continue to do so- according to two recent NTA reports.
The majority of Chinese tour operators confirmed that bookings to the United States increased, by an average of 16 to 20 percent, in the second quarter of 2011, as reported in the China Travel Trade Barometer. None of the surveyed operators reported a decline. The Barometer, produced quarterly by NTA, in partnership with Travel Market Insights and Ivy Alliance, captures input from top Chinese travel firms that promote and sell travel to the United States.
This increase is in line with an NTA report of its China Inbound Program. Based on a survey of U.S. tour operators registered with the program, which serves Chinese leisure group travelers visiting the United States, the number of tourists during the first quarter of 2011 was 99,752. Prior to the 2010 opening of the NTA Visit USA Center in Shanghai, a baseline of 46,709 leisure group travelers visited the United States during the second quarter of 2010. The baseline was established to monitor the progress of the NTA Visit USA Center and inbound travel from China to the United States.
“The increase of travelers served by tour operators in the NTA China Inbound Program essentially doubled,” said Lisa Simon, NTA president. “And those visitors represent nearly $600 million in travel and spending on U.S. lodging, food, entertainment and shopping.”
The Department of Commerce estimates that every Chinese visitor spends an average of more than $6,000, including airfare with U.S. carriers. In 2010, 802,000 Chinese travelers visited the United States, which includes all travelers from China, not just those calculated by the NTA China Inbound Program.
According to China Elite Focus, a marketing and research agency based in Shanghai, “only 5% of U.S. hotels and 3% of US retailers have a Chinese version of their website. There is a huge, untapped potential, to convince more affluent Chinese tourists to discover the US for leisure trips”
And continued growth is on the horizon, according to the China Travel Trade Barometer. Nearly all Chinese tour operators surveyed (92 percent) project an increase in 2011 third-quarter bookings from China to the United States. And for the fourth quarter of 2011, 77 percent of operators project bookings to be higher, with only 8 percent anticipating a drop from the same period in 2010.
Filed under USA
