Digital Marketing Campaigns 2019

Digital Marketing Campaigns 2019

The rise of the Chinese tourism market offers an opportunity for tourism professionals, eager to attract this clientele of fully independent travellers (FIT).

This blog will introduce the important marketing campaigns for Chinese tourism provided by EuroPass.

1. Chinese Tourist Industry Analysis

According to a report from UNWTO (United Nations world Tourism Organization), Chinese tourism achieved the Double-Digit Growth in 2016 by 12 % and maintained the fifth consecutive year of the world’s largest source of international tourists.

Tourism Spenders Chinese Tourist Industry Analysis

FITs (Free independent travellers) is the new trends among Chinese tourists. Their consumption gradually turns from low-cost group tours to high-spending independent travel.

E-Payment Chinese Tourist industry analysis
Source: WTOF & Tourism Research Center, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences World Tourism Economy Trends (2019)

With the rapid development of mobile payment, this has broken the dominant position of credit card in the tourist industry. A new study shows that 60 percent of European Chinese tourists, choose mobile payment as their first payment choice.

Smart solutions with WeChat Payment as their core digital solutions for Chinese tourism has been brought to millions of Chinese Travellers with the cooperation of European retails merchant. For example, the Paris-based store of Guerlain, who create exceptional Fragrance and Beauty products, are more ”China Ready’ by offering WeChat payments to their Chinese tourists and by offering more tailored and personalised products and services to these Chinese customers.

The most used Travel App in Chinese tourism such as Ctrip, Qunar, LY.COM all develop a Mini-program version on WeChat, providing service such as checking transportation, ordering tickets and accommodation, etc.

2. Marketing Campaigns

Weibo

Weibo is one of most open, social media platforms in China. It’s similar to the combination of Facebook and Twitter. Its main function are entertaining, exchange information, and to allow users to follow celebrities. Weibo has several different marketing campaigns and media forms, supporting brands to raise awareness of their brand through content marketing, online campaigns, etc.

Office de tourisme Paris, Weibo Official Account
Weibo Paris Tourist Office
Marketing Campaigns, KOL marketing on Weibo

Douyin

Douyin is a Chinese mini-music-video sharing social media platform with full-screen interface and powerful AI technology, that enjoys a large popularity among the young users. With over 1 million monthly active users, Douyin ranked as the 6th most downloaded app, worldly in the first quarter of 2018 within non-game IOS app. Douyin’s user are mainly concentrate in China’s first-tier and second-tier cities, and who have strong buying power. KOLs contribute mainly in Douyin to reach the Z generation.

Marketing Campaigns, Douyin official account
Douyin Paris Tourist Office
Office de tourisme Paris Douyin official account

3. Peak Period Campaigns

For Chinese customer, the seasonality of the tourist industry is obvious. Better focus on specific customer porfiles at specific periods, will help to develop the accuracy of your brands marketing. There are 4 main peak periods when Chinese tourist visit Europe: The May Day holiday, the summer vocation, the National Day Golden Weeks and the Spring Festival holiday. During these peak times, China’s tourism industry have become the top beneficiary.

There were 6.5 million Chinese tourists who travelled abroad in the lunar New Year in 2018, according to the report published jointly by the China tourism Academy, the China National Tourism Administration and Ctrip, which rise by 5.7 percent from 2017. At the same time, Chinese have more and more digital ways to celebrate holidays, for example distributing the red envelope on WeChat and attending themed campaigns on Douyin.

New year airport marketing campaign
WeChat Shake Campaign for Global Blue Germany and Austria for Chinese New Year

KOL

Key Opinion Leader is generally defined as those persons who have more accurate and professional information in a specific area. They are accepted or trusted by the relevant group and have a great influence over their purchasing behaviour. In China, the social platforms like Weibo, WeChat, Xiaohongshu, and some smaller video or live-streaming platforms are the most used for KOL.

Marketing Campaigns, KOL Campaign of Paris je t'aime
KOL Campaign: 2019 Paris tourism ambassador

The advantage of a KOL campaign is to reach the audience who is most relevant to the promotional content at one time, relying on the influence of KOLs, ROI is relatively high and the investment is relatively low compared to Celebrity Endorsement.

Guerlain New Year H5 Game

H5 game is the application within the WeChat group, which is one type of Mini-Program. Users can open and share the game easily with very short processing time. It could be combined with campaigns in WeChat Official Accounts, creating a better user experience and realising the impressive communication.

Guerlain New Year H5 Game Marketing Campaigns
Guerlain Chinese New Year H5 game

We designed Marketing Campaigns for WeChat Mini-Game and we created the treasure hunt game above, which offered different prizes to the user, such as tickets to different Paris Attractions. This helped to introduce the business/brand to the user, drove more awareness of potential new clients, and improved the client’s engagement.