8 Essentials to Working with Luxury Chinese Tourists

Chinese-friendly amenities show your sincerity, bilingual marketing materials, and welcome kits help you to share your information, but your Chinese guest relation adds the most value, whether there is a language barrier or not. To avoid direct confrontation, not lose face, not look bad, it is hard for them to share, especially something negative. Therefore, having the Chinese guest relation empowers you, as this person or department will enhance communication and in turn, smooth their total guest experience and encourage repeat business and referrals.

If you’re providing a Chinese guide to Chinese high net worth (HNW) clients, make sure that guide also has a high education level, understands the market segment, and speaks either very good Mandarin or the same dialect as the clients.

The best practice is to pay attention to their background, their previous travel experience, their education. Chinese are not different from other nationalities in that you need to take the time to understand them and give them personal service. Where do they come from in China? How do they make their money? Take time to learn about their personal background. Take personalization one step further for luxury travelers, including understanding their drink and food preferences.

The mistake is to think that in China they’re not used to luxury already. In Old World destinations, the service and hardware tend to be less luxurious than what they already have in China. We know what luxury is, and because they’re from China they’re should get the best quality of service.

Food is an important part of the Chinese tourism experience abroad, and Chinese travelers can be quite adventurous diners. Chinese travelers generally want to taste more but eat less. They normally enjoy fish, meat, and vegetable dishes more than enormous amounts of pasta. They are always curious and open to tasting raw food such as carpaccio, tartare, or octopus salad, but serving those as main dishes is risky. Offering different dishes to taste and share together would be more appreciated.

If they’re going through something very unfamiliar, they need Chinese food to balance it out. Even when they’re used to luxury, ultimately it will be home comforts they miss.

The sophisticated luxury travelers, you’ll need to strike a delicate balance. They won’t want to feel that you’re serving mass-market Chinese, but rather luxury clients from other markets, too. They don’t want to feel grouped together. You don’t necessarily have to have everything available in Chinese, all the Chinese amenities. In the UK, offer authentic English afternoon high tea, this quintessential experience will be more in demand than Chinese-style green tea.

The luxury clients will want “shopping without pressure” and be especially interested in things that are made locally, putting aside time in the itinerary for shopping should the client desire it, and to explain local shopping culture. In terms of luxury goods, Chinese clients are particularly aware of what they want and what it costs. They make accurate research on brands and products before they leave for a trip, and when they reach the destination they normally already know where to find what they want. We should fulfill clients’ desires, give suggestions if required, and mention niche valuable products as general cultural information and not as a shopping imposition.

The small surprises come in the form of relaxing and memorable "experiences", one of the biggest buzzwords in travel right now. Chinese travelers do not dislike relaxing, but they really want to be sure to have the whole schedule packed; the money-rich, time-poor tourists are concerned about time-wasting. Organize the tour they want, just making sure to save a few moments to take a nap, enjoy an aperitivo, or look at the sunset, not as key points of the program, but as an unexpectedly delightful part of the trip.

Reference: https://jingdaily.com/8-essent...