What the reopening of China’s border means for your business.
The recent Chinese government announcement of the removal of Covid-related travel and border restrictions for inbound and outbound travel is certain to have been a welcome Christmas present for many tourism operators around the world. From January 8, arrivals into China will no longer be subject to quarantine, removing the largest practical barrier to Chinese travelling abroad.
But this important policy change throws up a range of as yet unanswered questions. What does the end of Chinese quarantine mean in real terms? What needs to happen before we will see meaningful Chinese tourism return to our country? What can businesses do to ensure they are well placed to capitalise on a return of Chinese tourist?
The removal of quarantine on arrival in China essentially means that any Chinese citizen (or non-Chinese citizen with a valid Chinese visa) can enter the country without restriction. However, instead of immediately opening floodgates of Chinese tourists, there are a number of practical reasons why the return of Chinese travellers will be gradual rather than sudden:
Many Chinese citizens whose passports have expired over the past three years will need to reapply for new passports, as the Chinese government has significantly restricted passport issuance since 2020.
Chinese citizens must apply for visas to visit many western countries. While there are approximately 500,000 with valid New Zealand visitor visas, many potential visitors will sit outside this number and need to apply for a visa. Visa processing for many countries has proven to be slow post-pandemic.
Air capacity from China remains severely restricted. International flights from China are currently 8% of pre-pandemic levels and it will take time for airlines (both Chinese and international) to grow capacity. It is worth noting that for the week from Thursday 5 January, Auckland International Airport expects to have six passenger flight arrivals from China.
What is certain is there is huge pent-up demand in China for international travel. Destinations that make it easy for Chinese tourists to visit will see early success. Our view is that South East Asia will likely benefit most from the first wave of international travel, as its close proximity to China will enable air capacity to grow quicker, while shorter duration trips will be more practical initially. However, as it stands today, New Zealand’s policy to not require pre-departure testing from China will stand the country in good stead with both the Chinese public and government.
With the border reopening occurring close to the Chinese New Year holiday (January 21-27), we do not expect to see a significant up-tick in Chinese visitors for this year’s holiday. Rather, we expect to see a gradual increase in tourist volume over the coming months, likely reaching some semblance of pre-pandemic levels next summer.
That said, we will see more Chinese tourists wandering our streets over the coming weeks and months. It’s therefore important for local businesses to be ready to capitalise on the opportunities these valuable customers present. We have prepared a simple checklist for you to consider. The Flying Tiger team are specialists in sales and marketing targeting Chinese tourists, working with over 1,000 Australasian businesses prior to Covid. We operate the hugely successful South Alipay marketing programme. We are also the official marketing partner for WeChat Pay.
Our team is ready to support you as the Chinese market reopens. Here are some initial recommendations:
If you are a tourism operator, revisit your Chinese trade and marketing strategy. The Chinese travel trade and marketing landscape has changed significantly over the past three years. That’s why we have created a simple programme to help you revitalise your strategy to attract and convert Chinese tourists. Click here for more.
Confirm your acceptance of Chinese payments (Alipay and WeChat Pay) and ensure your business is ready to leverage the marketing opportunities that come with these two platforms. Both WeChat Pay and Alipay offer simple marketing tools, which can be managed on your behalf by Flying Tiger. Click here to learn about our Chinese payments marketing programme and register your interest to review your current status.
After three long years, we are excited for the return of Chinese tourists and we hope you are also. Our team is excited for the opportunity to support you to maximise this opportunity. If you have any questions, or would like to discuss any aspect of the Chinese tourist market, please do not hesitate to get in direct contact with the Flying Tiger team.
NZTE WeChat Webinar
Flying Tiger’s Jane Goh presented a webinar with New Zealand Trade & Enterprise. The webinar detailed how brands can get the very best out of this hugely popular platform, including developing private traffic pools of engaged followers and customers.
To download Jane’s slides, click here.
You can also watch the complete webinar below.
Flying Tiger and Xingyun Group announce strategic partnership to accelerate the digital transformation of Australian and New Zealand companies to enter China
Flying Tiger marketing is excited to announce a strategic partnership with Xingyun Group, to launch LinkieBuy in both Australia and New Zealand, to provide a one-stop cross-border integrated solution for Australasian companies to enter China through a seamless omni-channel e-commerce experience.
LinkieBuy is the world's largest cross-border digital service provider, for brands accessing the China market. Anchoring on their parent company Xingyun Group's worldwide warehousing and logistics network, LinkieBuy integrates its SaaS technology research and development with multi-channel online store deployment and operation solutions, to enable the digital transformation of Australia and New Zealand companies in the cross-border e-commerce channel in China.
Flying Tiger Marketing offers world leading services and products to help western businesses capitalise on the marketing and sales opportunities in China. In addition to our marketing partnership with Alipay, we are now able to support New Zealand companies expand their business and unlock new opportunities in China via the WeChat platform.
Through this partnership with Xingyun Group, Flying Tiger’s international team will be complimented by LinkieBuy’s SaaS solution, to help Australian and New Zealand companies in developing their own private domain traffic to unlock new growth opportunities. We focus on the key attributes of each channel’s ecosystem, through brand building, to strengthen private domain traffic and retain consumers, in order to help Australia and New Zealand companies expand their business in China.
“We are hugely excited about our new partnership with Xingyun Group and LinkieBuy. Flying Tiger already has very strong capability and experience helping our partners developing successful marketing and sales strategies to attract Chinese customers. This partnership enables us to offer the most powerful end-to-end solution for brands wanting to access the lucrative Chinese market,” says Flying Tiger’s founder, Ken Freer. Flying Tiger is committed to providing the most comprehensive and valuable marketing and promotion services for Australasian SMEs and overseas Chinese companies, exploring the local and Chinese markets.
Flying Tiger - WeChat’s Marketing Partner in Australia & New Zealand
Flying Tiger is proud to have been appointed the Marketing Partner for WeChat in both Australia and New Zealand. In a first of its kind partnership between WeChat and an Australasian agency, Flying Tiger will work with local brands to both ensure they are maximising their existing activity on the WeChat platform, as well as introducing new products and services designed to help brands attract Chinese customers at home and internationally.
While there are a number of local agencies offering WeChat marketing services, Flying Tiger’s Marketing Partner status affords our clients unparalleled access to WeChat at the strategic, support and new product development levels.
The goal of the partnership is for brands to achieve more on the platform than the sum of the individual parts of their WeChat activity.
“Many Australasian brands are already active on the WeChat platform, through adoption of WeChat Pay along with WeChat marketing platforms such as Official Accounts and Mini-Programmes. Fewer brands have a coordinated WeChat marketing and sale plan. Flying Tiger’s role is to work with brands at an education, strategic and implementation level, providing direct access to WeChat’s support teams,” says Flying Tiger Founder, Ken Freer.
Flying Tiger has already started working with the WeChat team on new product roll-outs, designed to help local businesses better connect with local Chinese customers.
“One of the exciting new products to launch is an ability for local brands to create special offers, known as Coupons, and distribute these directly to WeChat users within the app. Flying Tiger already supports over 1,100 Australasian businesses to create Coupons within Alipay, and this functionality can now be replicated for WeChat. In fact, Flying Tiger clients will now be able to create Coupons and publish to either or both apps with a simple mouse click!” says Freer.
To launch the new partnership, Flying Tiger is offering a free audit of brands’ current WeChat strategy, to identify ways their activity can be enhanced, along with outlining new services that will benefit the brand’s Chinese marketing and sales strategy. Brands wishing to schedule a no-obligation free twenty minute call to how they can improve their WeChat marketing strategy, can do so here.
Flying Tiger announces the launch of the Flying Tiger Alipay E-Store.
Flying Tiger’s Alipay E-Store is an exciting new concept to allow local brands to sell their products and services to the hugely valuable local Chinese audience from directly within the Alipay app.
With over 250,000 Chinese residents in New Zealand and 1,200,000 in Australia, local Chinese customers are a hugely valuable opportunity for local businesses. Providing a customised e-commerce solution within a trusted platform like Alipay, is the best way to reach an audience that is often seen as hard to reach for local businesses without Chinese marketing, sales and language skills.
The Flying Tiger Alipay E-Store is also the most cost-effective way to reach and sell to local Chinese customers - $39.95/mth + 5% sales commission.
The Flying Tiger Alipay E-Store features a huge variety of product and service categories – health and wellness, tourism, skincare, food, home services… the opportunity is almost endless!
Simply load your products or services and let Flying Tiger and Alipay take care of the rest. Orders are delivered straight to your Inbox or via direct message – Flying Tiger’s Alipay E-Store is a turnkey solution, letting your business tap into the local Chinese market today.
Find out more here.
Flying Tiger announces strategic partnership with Beijing-based digital marketing agency, Media Box
Flying Tiger marketing is excited to announce a strategic partnership with China-based digital marketing agency, Media Box. Founded in Beijing in 2016, Media Box’s team of over 150 professional digital marketers provides a full suite of digital marketing services including strategy, app and website development, SEO/SEM, content creation, social media community management and KOL/KOC management.
Flying Tiger Marketing offers world leading services and products to help western businesses capitalise on the marketing and sales opportunities of the Alibaba Group’s platforms, particularly Alipay. Through this partnership with Media Box, Flying Tiger will be able to broaden its service offering to support its partners across all Chinese marketing, social media and sales platforms. Flying Tiger’s international team will be complimented by Media Box’s on-the-ground capability to provide an offering unmatched in the Australasian and North American markets.
“Since launching Flying Tiger earlier in 2020, I have been on the lookout for the right China-based partner to support our existing experience and capabilities. In Media Box we have found a partner with a broad range of skills that are second to none. Flying Tiger will now be able to offer our existing and future partners a comprehensive suite of services to attract more local and mainland Chinese customers to their business,” says Flying Tiger’s founder, Ken Freer.
The first projects being collaborated on by the two agencies are already underway.
To contact the Flying Tiger team to discuss how they and Media Box can help your business, click here.
Flying Tiger announces marketing partnership with Alipay.
Flying Tiger Marketing is proud to announce our appointment as an official marketing partner by Chinese mobile payments app, Alipay. As a marketing partner of Alipay, the team at Flying Tiger look forward to working with our clients to help them access and leverage Alipay’s marketing platform to both grow their Chinese customer numbers, but also grow average spend.
Accepting Alipay gives local businesses the ability to tap into Alipay’s over 900 million users in China alone. What’s more, Alipay is a great way to attract Chinese customers in Australia. But simply accepting Alipay is only part of the opportunity. Leveraging Alipay’s sophisticated marketing platform moves the opportunity beyond simply acceptance of another payment type.
Through the use of Alipay’s Discover platform and Alipay Coupons, a business can both present their service or product offering, but also provide special offers to Chinese customers to encourage them to come in-store.
Flying Tiger makes it easy for our clients to unlock the potential of Alipay’s marketing capability via an innovative self-service marketing platform. Our platform enables our clients to set-up and manage all their own Alipay marketing themselves, without the need for Chinese marketing or language skills. Flying Tiger makes the process incredibly simple, while clients can also tap into our team of China marketing experts to ensure their product and marketing offers are the best possible fit for Chinese customers.
To find out more about Flying Tiger’s Alipay marketing portal and our services, click here.
Covid-19 Update
Flying Tiger is here to help our clients during this uncertain time.
Businesses around the world are operating in incredibly uncertain times. At Flying Tiger we are very conscious that business owners and marketing teams will be singularly focused on steering their businesses through this period as best as is possible.
However we also know that the Chinese market will likely be that which leads the tourism recovery in most countries. We recognise that it’s important for our partners to be preparing themselves and their businesses for the time when borders re-open and tourism recommences, in whatever form.
Because of that, and to help alleviate financial pressure on our clients, the Flying Tiger programme will be provided free of charge until such time as borders re-open and tourism recommences. We hope this move will help our clients to maximise this time to prepare for future recommencement of Chinese tourism.
To discuss how the Flying Tiger Alipay marketing programme can help your business prepare for the future, contact Ken Freer at ken.freer@flyingtiger.co
Best wishes,
Ken Freer & the Flying Tiger team