SO IMPORTANT is the Chinese market to New South Wales (NSW) that the Australian state aims to double the arrivals from this priority market by 2020 by banking on local festivals.
In Shanghai on his first international mission as premier of NSW last week, Mike Baird shared that the number of Chinese visitors to the state in the last fiscal year was close to 500,000.
This represents merely two per cent of China’s total outbound market, and NSW will aim to increase the number of Chinese visitors to one million by 2020.
The Chinese also stayed over 12,000 nights and spent A$1.5 billion (US$1.4 billion).
Baird said NSW will leverage the success of Vivid Sydney 2014, the event he was in Shanghai to promote, and other recent promotional activities to strengthen cooperation with industry partners, including airlines and travel consultants, by launching music festival-themed packages.
It will also hold the largest fam trip for Chinese retail and wholesale agents to experience Vivid Sydney 2015 personally, to better promote the event in China.
The light, music, and ideas festival this year injected A$41 million into state coffers this year, and saw attendance by some 30,000 tourists out of 1.4 million participants, a 79 per cent increase over last year.
Sydney has also recently kicked off its Love Every Second in Sydney campaign in Beijing and Shanghai.
Additionally, the China Australia Millennial Project will also be launched as part of the Vivid Ideas segment of 2015 Vivid Sydney 2015, where 100 young innovators each from China and Australia will engage in a five-day exchange.
Article by Jessie Liu. Translated by Ong Yanchun from the original TTG China e-Daily, September 5, 2014 article.
