WHILE Polish Tourist Organisation (POT) has already made inroads into mainland China since 2003, it will now pump in more budget and resources in its destination marketing efforts from this year onwards.
Spearheading the Polish NTO’s ramped-up efforts is a tourist campaign, Move Your Imagination, rolled out in selected Asian markets just earlier this month.
“We have been promoting Poland with Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia at CITM in the past, but this year marks the first time we are launching an independent campaign in China,” said Barbara Tutak, POT’s deputy director of planning and marketing department.
“We have a fund of 12.5 million euros (US$17.2 million) from the EU, of which 85 per cent will be spent on mainland China while the rest will be on Japan and India,” she said. “Mainland China is the most important market for us in Asia.”
As the central European country has been successful in attracting well-heeled Chinese travellers between 40 and 55, according to Tutak, POT is also keen to woo a younger segment with a campaign imagery that centres on a young couple – a Polish man and a Chinese woman – in various fairy-tale-like places, suggesting opportunities of adventure and romance in Poland’s wealth of cultural and natural attractions.
To raise awareness of Poland as an outbound destination for the Chinese, the NTO will place advertisements across 30 bus stops in Kunming, travel magazines and leading Chinese newspapers such as Shanghai Daily, plus commercials on major TV stations from January 2014.
Earlier this year, POT invited 12 Chinese travel specialists to take part in the 1st Regional Forum Poland-China in Gdańsk and has organised seven fam trips with LOT Polish Airlines since April, with another seven such trips in the pipeline for 1H2014, Tutak shared.
The organisation already has a Shanghai-based marketing representative, but it is also looking to establish an office in either Beijing or Shanghai by 2015.
Poland welcomed 35,000 mainland visitors in 2012 and forecasts 69,000 by 2015.
