Web marketing strategies for the Chinese tourism market

Abstract

This thesis mainly talks about web marketing strategies for the Chinese tourism market. I chose this subject because, even though Chinese outbound tourism is a recent phenomenon, its growth has been impressive and many tourists has begun to choose Europe and Italy as their destinations, creating a big opportunity for our tourism industry and drawing the attention of more and more people on the Chinese tourism market. However, the characteristics of this market are largely unknown to many subjects of the Italian tourism industry, who are frequently unable to promote Italy effectively. Therefore, it is important to study effective strategies to attract this flow of tourists. Another important trend in China is the recent incredible development of the internet and the fast increase in its uses in everyday life among a large portion of the Chinese population, particularly the urban population. This has provoked impressive changes in the Chinese business environment, especially in the marketing field. For example, social media in China is no longer only an innovative way to spread information, communicate and create new contacts, but has also become a marketing tool for every kind of business, including the tourism business. Therefore, the internet and social media have become also new means for private and public tourism professionals to communicate and provide information to Chinese tourists, especially the young ones. In particular, this last category of tourists (25-35 years old) is increasing faster than the other categories and uses internet to search for information and book their holidays. Consequently, web marketing has become an indispensable part of a promotional strategy of touristic destinations. Considering the importance of these developments in the Chinese tourism market, I decided to analyze in details web marketing on Chinese social media as a way to promote effectively the Italian destinations. I divided my thesis in three chapters. The first one examines the Chinese tourism market, the data about Chinese outbound tourism, especially the data about Chinese tourists coming to Europe and Italy, the characteristics and categories of Chinese tourists and the marketing and promotion strategies for the Chinese market. The second chapter is about the internet development in China, the most important Chinese social media, some information about the characteristics of social media marketing in China and some information and data about how Chinese tourists use the internet and social media to organize their travel, with a focus on the most famous Chinese OTA (online travel agencies) and tourism websites. The third chapter goes on to analyze the web marketing strategies in the tourism market in China, a series of practical cases and successful examples of social media marketing in this sector, and, finally, some of the Italian initiatives in this field.