China Outbound Tourism Services
One of LEEMIANs specialties is tourism marketing. We have a long history inside the tourism industry in China, and our team consists of several high-profile professionals from the private sector as well as the public sector. Our advice on tourism projects doesn’t come from reports and general predictions, but from actual experience and knowledge from within the industry.
LEEMIAN has a well-established and far-reaching strategic cooperation relationship with many regional Tourism Administration bodies of the government. These include cooperation on travel fairs, joint promotion campaigns and unparalleled access to venues and events on grassroots levels.
In the private sector we have working relations with travel agents all over China. We support them in developing new products and they support us with sales teams and local promotion campaigns.
To reach the full potential of a long-term tourism marketing campaign you will need an in-house design team to present your destination in the best way possible, and to make changes according to the needs of the ever-changing segmented markets.
A tourism campaign in China is much more than just handing out flyers at a travel fair. In order to get the best results of a presentation you need to think about what kind of design will suit the different markets and regions best.
To keep costs down LEEMIAN can help you design a reusable presentation that can be reused at many different fairs or events, and with multiple layers of content that allows you to change the message of your campaign to suit local conditions.
Long gone are the days when only China’s 1st tier cities were attractive markets for foreign tourism organizations. Almost every corner of China now reveals a segmented market that is valuable if approached the right way. Knowing which markets to target and how and when to do it can be difficult to determine, but LEEMIANs team of experts can provide valuable advice in unison with our agency partners across the country.
China is big and there is an almost endless supply of places with regional markets to explore. If you opt for a reusable campaign design, LEEMIAN will handle all logistic involved in moving your presentation from city to city and province to province, and will also handle storage when not in use.
Travel sales in China are not only done online, despite popular opinion to the contrary. Many segments within the Chinese markets, including the lucrative millennial segments, should be approached in several different ways to ensure maximum results from your marketing efforts.
One of these efforts is whole-selling your travel product(s) to Chinese agents, who then in turn sell to the local markets. Almost all agents in China already have a social media presence and one or more physical outlets from where to sell their products. When cooperating with local agents you get fast-tracked into the markets, and do not only have to rely on your own social media marketing. At the same time, your product(s) can spread across several different markets (geographic and demographic) with very little effort.
As an integral part of the Chinese tourism industry LEEMIAN has relationships with hundreds of agents all over China. We will find the right partner(s) for you and help prepare for product launch for you.
All over China, in every city and province, there are literally thousands of projects of a cultural or promotional nature that might benefit your own project. Often these projects are actively seeking some form of cooperation with foreign entities, and will offer very favorable terms of cooperation to any interested foreign organization that fit with their project profile.
The project you are participating in may very well generate direct results. That is priority number one. But participation in these kinds of projects is also a very effective way of inserting yourself into the industry. In a country where guanxi (a framework of personal connections that exists everywhere in Chinese society) are so important, almost any project that will connect you with local organizations will have long-term positive effects for you.
China sees tourism as one of the main pillars of economic development. In recent years the government has become very active in promotion campaigns and events, and is constantly working to develop a healthy tourism industry. The different Tourism Authorities that handle tourism development in districts, cities and provinces across China are often looking for new and exiting possibilities for cooperation.
Quite often a cooperation set-up will mean a whole range of possibilities for foreign organizations, including the use of venues, access to fairs, joint promotion, access to media and much more.
LEEMIAN has already been engaged in strategic cooperation with many different Tourism Authority bodies across China for a number of years. We are trusted by the authorities, and they know that we also bring something to the table. Working with LEEMIAN means access to these benefits.
Just like everywhere else, the Chinese are big internet users. Hundreds of millions of people are online, and many use the internet to search for information about your product.
WeChat, the number one platform for connecting with friends and looking for the next new thing, is soon going to reach 700 million users. Weibo, an online platform of user-created content, also counts its users in tens of millions.
Simply put, if you’re not on these, you’re not in China. LEEMIANs in-house team of social media experts and web designers can help you set up everything you need to be present in the booming online world in China.
However in tourism, it does not make sense to just do your own social media presence. The structure of the industry allows for rapid scaling of projects if you utilize partner platforms as well. To do that effectively, a strong, central control of joint campaigns is necessary to avoid misrepresentation or being dragged into a price war with your competitors.
Market predictions are a good source of information about general conditions of the markets in China. Predictions are also helpful to determine the feasibility of entering new markets. But in order to build a long-term relationship with your customers in China, you will need a strategy that goes one step further. You will need to know how to use predictions to your advantage, and build on them to ensure that you are ahead of the competition, not just this year or next year, but in five years time from now.
LEEMIAN will provide you will real-time updates on market developments. Waiting until predictions have turned to fact will set you back in this fiercely competitive market, so real-time knowledge becomes your most valuable asset in the struggle for future markets.
It’s knowing what’s happening right now, today, that will make you successful – not what happened yesterday or last year.
Now, predictions are good. They are useful. But they are also easily accessible to everyone. They won’t give you the edge that you need to take control of the markets. Why not let us show you how you can move into markets before they are fully mature and set you up in time to be first mover in new markets?
Being first mover means a lot in China. You will face little competition, and building your brand will be easier than in fully mature markets. Being a first mover also means that you will be able to lead markets towards new segments before they have even arisen.
LEEMIAN can not only help you developed existing markets. Let us show you how you carve completely new markets out where there were none before. This is taking control of your markets!
China is a massive market. There are hundreds of millions of potential consumers, but also thousands of competitors all battling it out for the attention of the consumers. Needless to say, you will need to take part in the battle.
But battling it out with competitors is not the only way to get attention. What if you could source customers towards your products, way before they even know they need them? It may sound too good to be true, but it is in fact possible to create customer sourcing systems that will allow you to reach your customers earlier than your competitors and at a much earlier stage in the cycle of awareness to purchase.
Accountability is one of LEEMIANs core beliefs. You need to know how to maximize the effects of spending money on campaigns. Is your product ready for building a new market? How big should your commitment to fair participation be? Does increased spending on marketing in a specific market actually increase sales, or can you spend less and achieve the same results? Will a segmented campaign do better than an overall effort? Or is it time to pull back from one channel and put emphasis on exploring another?
LEEMIAN will set up systems that can measure effects of localized campaigns very accurately. If one market does well and another doesn’t, we can shift focus to the better market in a matter of weeks due to our multi-layered campaign design system. We can also change focus from one dimension of your campaign in a single area of China to another, if preliminary tests show this need.
Live feed accountability of campaigns will help you cut out excess spending on campaigns that do not have any effect, and help you maximize your efforts where the effects are greatest. True accountability.