I recently joined one of my clients on a sales mission to China to visit some potential tour operator partners who specialise in tailor-made itineraries for their wealthy Chinese customer base.  My client’s product is aimed at such individuals (though not yet in China) with a taste for accommodation outside the traditional luxury 5* hotel, usually involving a minimum of 3 nights.  The attraction of China is that, according to the Boston Consulting Group,  it had 2.4m millionaires in 2013, a rise of 81% on the previous year, and now places it second in the overall global league table of the mega wealthy.

But the rise of the independent Chinese traveller is still a relatively new phenomenon, so the purpose of the mission was to establish whether the Chinese market has matured to such an extent that there is appeal for such a product, and if so how it will need to be adapted to meet the needs of the Chinese market.

There is a danger in the west that we over generalise about the Chinese market.  China is about the size of Europe; we should regard the Chinese as similarly diverse across their 9.7m square kilometres.  We shouldn’t therefore have been surprised to find that the tour operators we visited represented a diverse customer base, despite the fact that they work with a universally rich customer base.

We visited eight tour operators over 3 days and we were universally welcomed with hospitality (and a glass of hotel water) by senior members of staff – usually 2 or 3 in number.  Of the 25 people we met, approximately half had good English. With the others, we were helped by the translation services of our Account Director who accompanied us on all our visits.

• Of the 8 tour operators visited, only 2 felt that their customer base was so wedded to the top Western hotel brands, that there was no immediate opportunity for my client’s product.
• All were fairly universal in their view that it is necessary to deploy Chinese support staff on the ground.
• Similarly, deploying Chinese sales staff at reservation centres is also key.
• Interestingly, most believed their sales team could cope with an English booking system, though a couple of demonstrations of the speed of access from a European hosted website illustrated that hosting your booking system in China is more critical. We had more success with a more basic, less dynamic website, but you may wish to consider including Chinese website-hosting in your budget if you are planning on entering the Chinese market.
• Despite all the tour operators offering tailor made itineraries for their clients, some wanted my client, who only sells accommodation, to build product around the accommodation.

So, was the mission a success?   Undoubtedly yes! My client left China confident that there is demand for his product, but also clear that launching in China will require a commitment that goes well beyond paying my company a fee for a sales mission.  He recognises that he has just taken the first step and that ‘potential’ will not turn into ‘contracts’ without follow-up and important decisions on deployment of resource both at destination and in China.

Guanxi can organise a similar tailored sales mission for you from £3,550 plus VAT.  We will create an itinerary for you over 3 days, making appointments with tour operators tailored to your product.  In addition, we’ll take care of the small detail that will help to make your sales mission a success, such as providing an introduction to your company in Chinese, and printing your business cards in Chinese, complete with your new Chinese name!  During your sales mission, you will be accompanied to all your meetings by one of our team from our Beijing office, who will also act as your guide and host during your trip.  Beijing isn’t the easiest city to navigate around, so we will arrange a private car to pick you up from your hotel each morning and drive you to all your meetings.  We will even pick you up and drop you off at the airport at the beginning and end of your trip.

For more information, please contact Helena Beard.