The Analysis of Global Tourism Boards’ Chinese Websites
Su, Duo (2011)
Kajaanin ammattikorkeakoulu
2011
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-201102172459
http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-201102172459
Tiivistelmä
During the last decade, China’s outbound tourism has increased rapidly, and China is now ranked as the biggest source market for international tourism in Asia. The number of Chinese tourists travelling abroad was less than 10 million in 1999 increasing convincingly to 46 million in 2009. Meanwhile, ITB Berlin 2010 indicated that social media is the most important tool in capturing new market shares. Internet is a great significant form of social media whilst China has the highest amount of Internet users, up by 28.9% compared to 2008. How efficiently did global tourism boards target Chinese travellers with the use of their Chinese websites, especially social media? The question brought the original intention for this study. The purpose of the study was to examine the current situation of tourism boards’ official Chinese websites, identify typical mistakes and excellent examples from the analyzed samples, and extend the commission party’s services as a future reference.
This study introduced the background of outbound tourism market, therefore China’s outbound tourism development stages and consumer behaviour related literatures were researched. Based on Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Georg Arlt’s criteria, eight groups of criteria were refined, specially adapted to current Chinese demand. Ranks of the surveyed websites were all primary data and were subject to quantitative and qualitative analysis.
This study discovered that outbound tourists from Mainland China held the fourth place in the world, taking into account international tourism expenditure. Still, many important tourism boards did not provide any Chinese-language in the official tourism websites. All together 115 official websites were visited, whose Chinese language content were graded including 38 NTOs and 29 DMOs. Half of top 20 on the ranking list were from Asian areas, and 70% of the analyzed websites did not reach 45% of the entire possible points. 38% of them did not have a social network while 45% made use of Facebook and Twitter that were unfortunately banned in Mainland China. Websites were differently graded mainly on account of the criteria namely “languages”, “specific content”, “topicality” and “interactivity”.
This study introduced the background of outbound tourism market, therefore China’s outbound tourism development stages and consumer behaviour related literatures were researched. Based on Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Georg Arlt’s criteria, eight groups of criteria were refined, specially adapted to current Chinese demand. Ranks of the surveyed websites were all primary data and were subject to quantitative and qualitative analysis.
This study discovered that outbound tourists from Mainland China held the fourth place in the world, taking into account international tourism expenditure. Still, many important tourism boards did not provide any Chinese-language in the official tourism websites. All together 115 official websites were visited, whose Chinese language content were graded including 38 NTOs and 29 DMOs. Half of top 20 on the ranking list were from Asian areas, and 70% of the analyzed websites did not reach 45% of the entire possible points. 38% of them did not have a social network while 45% made use of Facebook and Twitter that were unfortunately banned in Mainland China. Websites were differently graded mainly on account of the criteria namely “languages”, “specific content”, “topicality” and “interactivity”.