Brand USA tours China to pitch travel

After kicking off the 2016 China-US Tourism Year in Beijing last week, Brand USA, the US' official tourism marketing office, completed its first trade mission to China.

Tourism office representatives and about 30 other industry partners traveled through Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou to promote the US' gateway cities and smaller destinations.

The industry was enthusiastic about the two governments highlighting tourism this year, said David Whitaker, Brand USA's chief marketing officer.

"I think the industry was very enthusiastic and responding very favorably to seeing that the two governments had made this such a priority. That brought a real sense of added enthusiasm to the trade and industry side of things," he told China Daily.

Members of the Brand USA delegation met with Chinese travel agents, tour operators, incentive partners and various members of the media.

Whitaker said the trip to China was mostly a way to help establish relationships between US industry members and their Chinese counterparts.

"We try to create an umbrella where we capitalize on that energy, and it's also making new connections, bringing new information to the marketplace, as well as continuing to expose China in general to the breadth and width of the United States," he said.

Brand USA was focused on promoting destinations to the Chinese travel industry beyond major gateway cities like New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

"The United States has to be cognizant that the Chinese traveler is not a myopic traveler — we all tend to look at countries and audiences and target groups in a general sense. For decades, we all probably looked at China in a general sense," Whitaker said.

"The United States can't take the Chinese traveler for granted and just assume, ‘It's growing, it's a big audience, we're always going to get our fair share.' We have to constantly be educating and constantly being vigilant that we have to match the experiences with the expectation," he said.

Tourism representatives from Oregon were part of the US delegation, marketing the West Coast state for Chinese travelers.

Visits to Oregon from China have seen a steady increase since 2014, with many tourists opting for the state's 0 percent sales tax—a big draw for Chinese shoppers whose No 1 activity in Oregon is shopping, where they each spend on average $6,000 per trip.

Individual travelers also are beginning to go to Oregon to experience an "authentic piece" of America, said Greg Eckhart, global sales manager for Asia at Travel Oregon, the official tourism office.

"Right at the outset of the mission, Crater Lake National Park entered into a sister-park agreement Mount Wuyishan" in Fujian province, he said. "This was a good way to drive more awareness to the fact that we have that relationship between the national park in China and a national park in Oregon."

The trade mission also helped travel and trade industry members in Oregon create business opportunities with their counterparts in China "that Travel Oregon can either take advantage of kind of on our own, or also opportunities that our local partners and small businesses in Oregon can take advantage of — whether it's a small cycling-tour operator to sightseeing-tour operators that do whale-sightings and things like that," he said.

In 2014, about 62,000 Chinese tourists visited Oregon. Through the third quarter of 2015, there were roughly 107,000 visitors, a 25 percent increase from the same period in 2014, according to statistics from Travel Oregon.

amyhe@chinadailyusa.com