Campaigns welcome growing number of Chinese visitors

Attractions, shops, hotels tailor services for high spendng tourists from China

Chinese tourists are hugely important to the United Kingdom's economy as they are high spenders, stay for extended periods of time and are interested in visiting a variety of cities, said Robin Johnson, head of overseas operations at VisitBritain, the UK's national tourism agency.

"Chinese tourists in the UK are growing at a far quicker pace than we anticipated. They are also becoming increasingly sophisticated, with specific needs and preferences, moving away from the packaged tour market," Johnson said.

The most recent inbound tourism figures showed that in the first nine months of 2014, Britain welcomed 156,000 visitors from China, which contributed 411 million pounds ($638.5 million) to the UK's economy. Chinese tourists currently spend an average of 2,508 pounds per visit compared to the overall average spend of 640 pounds per visit.

To further attract Chinese tourists, VisitBritain recently launched a campaign that gives landmark London attractions and locations Chinese names, which were chosen by the Chinese public.

Under the campaign the Shard was named Lun Dun Zhui, which means London cone, King's Cross St Pancras is known as Mo Fa Huo Che Zhan, or magic station in reference to Harry Potter, while Savile Row, the famous men's fashion tailoring street, is named Gao Fu Shuai Zhi Lu, which means tall, rich, handsome, a Chinese way of describing the perfect man.

The 1.6 million pound GREAT Names for GREAT Britain campaign was carried out through 10 weeks of votes across China. It was VisitBritain's biggest-ever marketing campaign in China and reached nearly 300 million potential Chinese tourists via the agency's Weibo and WeChat platforms.

More than 2 million people visited the campaign pages and nearly 30 million Chinese people watched the launch video, with 13,000 new names suggested.

Johnson said the campaign was unique because it invited the Chinese public to get involved in the process of creating names, so they could give their own interpretations, which made the chosen names more special to Chinese visitors.

"We want the Chinese public to feel that the destinations are welcoming," he said. Johnson added that VisitBritain was encouraging the destinations and attractions to adopt the Chinese names in their marketing materials and promotional campaigns.

"This would help these destinations to raise awareness in China and in turn it will legitimize some of the Chinese names in the long term," he said.

Tamara Fraser, UK marketing and sales manager at the tourism shopping tax refund company Global Blue, said that China was the top spending global shopper group in the UK and accounted for a quarter of total international tax-free spending.

"Tax-free shopping, cultural training and UnionPay services are all valuable ways to accommodate these shoppers while they are here, but VisitBritain's new strategy to rename key UK attractions will help encourage Chinese shoppers to venture into wider areas across the UK and expand their spending potential in new regions," Fraser said.

Another key VisitBritain initiative was the Great China Welcome Campaign, which provided guidelines to UK retailers and tour operators on how to welcome Chinese tourists.

The guidelines said luxury hotels could focus on preparing the right food for Chinese visitors, items such as slippers in hotel rooms that Chinese visitors would expect and could provide Chinese television channels.

They also suggested that department stores could recruit Chinese-speaking staff or install UnionPay terminals, while smaller retailers could provide information in Mandarin.

"The campaign helps businesses understand China as a market and target their services accordingly," Johnson said.