Russia and China contributes immensely in pushing the tourist arrivals in the Asia Pacific region. “When it comes to the business of travel and tourism, Russian and Chinese travellers play a large role in shaping the landscape of travel and tourism in the Asia Pacific region. The aim of the workshop was to deliver a deeper understanding of the Chinese and Russian markets and provide our participants the practical tools and skills to increase their share of these highly lucrative segments,” Mario Hardy, CEO, PATA, said while delivering his speech at ‘China and Russia Outbound Tourism Markets’ at a workshop organized by PATA during two-day PATAcademy-HCD in Bangkok.
The interactive programme was led by Philip Schaetz, Managing Director – CUBE, Hong Kong SAR; Vadim Tylik, Chief Executive Officer – RMAA Group, Russia, and Vera Wong, Director of Sales & Marketing – Stargazer Company Limited, China.
The workshop enabled participants to leverage destination, consumer and competitor’ insights in order to create an effective destination marketing strategy from a 360-degree perspective. The workshop specifically focussed on the Chinese and Russian digital marketing landscape, social media platforms, future market trends, and how to attract them to your destination.
Attending the workshop were 12 participants from 5 destinations, representing 7 organisations from Malaysia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Thailand and the Solomon Islands.
On the first day of the workshop, Schaetz began with an introductory session on leveraging consumer insights to create an effective destination marketing strategy. “The delegates learned how to use consumer and market insights from a deep dive 360 degree perspective to drive effective destination marketing strategies,” said Mr. Schaetz. “It is always very rewarding to meet people from all these exciting places who just love to drive awareness about their destination to the world. Their passion is infectious!”
Wong from Stargazer, a destination marketing company in China that specialises in offering marketing and sales services to destinations, attractions and hotels, led a session on the Chinese outbound market. ” From my session, the participants learned a general picture of the Chinese marketing landscape and learned to understand OTAs, UGC, social media platforms and blogger marketing. This integrated understanding could help them to make smarter decisions for the Chinese market in the future,” she noted
On the second day of the programme, Tylik focussed on the Russian Federation, providing participants with statistics, analysis and trends of outbound tourism from the country. “During the last few years, I have been working closely with different destinations helping them to enter the Russian market. As a result of this activity, I got a lot of experience that I was able to share at the workshop. The first part of my presentation focussed on the Russian outbound tourism market as well as business trends and statistics. In the second part, I talked about tactics and strategies on how to win the hearts of Russian tourists and attract them to your destination,” said Tylik.
