Afghanistan: The Growing Destination for Chinese Summer Travel
The fact Afghanistan attracts Chinese tourists at all may come as a surprise to some, but a number of companies offer tours to the country where there were more than 11,000 casualties of violence last year.
Direct flights between China, Afghanistan promote trade and Tourism
The direct flights between Afghan capital Kabul and Urumqi, capital of northwest China’s Xinjiang Region, are widely welcomed by passengers, including business people, students, and travelers. The direct flights have facilitated easier travel for the Chinese businessmen investing in Afghanistan. The direct Kabul-Urumqi flight, which has opened an air corridor, in November 2018 to intensify bilateral trade between the two countries and also helped Afghan business people to export local products to and import goods from China, far easier than before. Afghanistan is seeking to export pine nuts, the demand for which has increased in the Chinese market, through the corridor.
Trade volume between China and Afghanistan has increased, and both sides continue to show a tendency toward more commercial exchanges. China carries increasing weight for Afghanistan in terms of trade since Sino-Afghan economic ties have grown stronger in recent years.
Where to go to Afghanistan
A relatively safe way to visit Afghanistan is by crossing the border from Tajikistan to the so-called Wakhan corridor. This part of the country was never under the Taliban and is a popular first introduction to Afghanistan. During your first trip, you can spend a couple of days in Kabul.
You have also several excursions out of the city: a day trip to Panjshir valley (beautiful valley and Ahmad Shah Massoud’s final resting place) and half-day trips to Paghman village (famous as a picnic spot for Kabulis with restaurants lined up along a river), Istalif village (famous for its pottery tradition) and Qargha Lake (which is really a man-made reservoir and a dam in the far northwest corner of Kabul, popular for picnic, boating and horse-riding).
You have the well-known cities of Herat and Mazar-i Sharif. With its spectacular architecture, Herat. The magnificent Shrine of Hazrat Ali aside, Mazar-i Sharif was a lot less interesting as a city but excelled at the variety of excursions outside it. Hairatan, the Hazara village nearby (“Qariye Hazara” in Dari) and Balkh. Hairatan was by far the most random destination of the above: its sole attraction was the Amu Darya, the river separating Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, and, to a lesser extent, the bridge connecting the two countries.
How Afghan Tourism Professionals can attract more Chinese Tourists?
There are many ways to attract Chinese tourists, but the most important is to find the right way. Chinese Clients are very different from the western clients, so if you want to lure them you have to integrate their ecosystem.
Here, I will give you some useful secret to get more Chinese tourists.
Tips for generating tourist leads in China
In China, digital is the first step if you want to enter in the game. Your branding, website, social media presence and SEO can all contribute to generating leads online.
Use the Lead Generation
What mean Lead Generation for you? Lead Generation is the process to convert a visitor to a potential client. you have to bet on the Lead Generation strategy if you want to get more Chinese clients. It occurs after you’ve attracted an audience and are ready to convert those visitors into leads for your sales team (namely sales-qualified. Once you put all of the elements together, you can use your various promotional channels to drive traffic to your landing page to start generating leads.
Branding and Online Reputation
The stronger and more trusted your travel agency is, the easier it should become to attract interest in what services you have to offer. This makes it important to develop strong marketing strategies such as taking steps to ensure your travel agency is visible online, that your service is consistent and high quality and that your business is committed to delivering on any promises made. Your branding should differentiate your services from the competition.
Your travel agency is also your story, so you should aim to weave storytelling and narrative into your content and communications, in order to connect in more ‘human’ ways with your audience. This may be particularly important in China, where storytelling has a long history.
Localized and well done Chinese website
A quality Chinese website is good for inbound marketing where Chinese Clients search for your services rather than the other way around. It’s important your website is not just an adapted version of your western one, but that it has been designed specifically for your Chinese audience in order to be more accessible for them. This means that for any type of marketing in China the content should be produced in simplified Chinese by a Chinese-language speaker.
The content on your site should be authentic and high quality, providing useful and relevant information for your target. Don’t underestimate the power of the landing pages. It’s very important to develop quality landing pages, the ‘entry’ point to your website.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) on Baidu
The better your site ranks with search engines such as Baidu in China, the more likely it is to appear at or near the top of search engine results pages. This involves producing regular content that is optimized with specific keywords, and backlinks. For China, you will need to have your site optimized for local search engines, such as Baidu and Qihoo 360, rather than Google.
If your strategy is based on Google, forget about it because you will lose your time and a lot of money. You should focus your strategy on Baidu because it’s the first search engine in China. Nobody in China uses Google as a search engine for getting information about brands or products.
It’s all about Baidu, so trust the process and adopt Baidu SEO in your digital marketing strategy.
Chinese Social media
While it can be easy to think of social media as being more relevant for the tourism sphere, social media can provide good opportunities for conversations, content sharing and for promotion of your Travel agency. In China, people use social media a lot, the most relevant case it the use of Wechat the most popular Chinese social network, followed by Weibo. These social media help Chinese people to share information with their community and also get so information about the brands that they like through some Official Brand/ agency account. It’s easier to reach a large audience quickly.
But like we said previous, keep in mind that the Chinese audience is completely different from the rest of the world. So you have to re-think your social media marketing in China
Advertising
Paid advertising such as PPC and banner ads can improve online visibility and increase your leads and conversions. It’s important to measure the impacts of all your advertising campaigns, so you know what works best for the future. Click here for more information
Don’t forget to corporate with the Chinese Travel agency
In order to get more trust and visibility, you have to with a travel agency in China such as Ctrip, Mafengwo, QYER, Tuniu, and Qunar. They are very powerful and very popular in China.
Sum Up
China is a big country with a lot of opportunities, now it’s up to you to take advantage of this huge opportunity to become the most popular Afghan travel agency in China. You can reach a lot of Chinese tourists if you adopt the right digital marketing agency.
We are Gentlemen Marketing Agency and we can help you to develop the best and more efficient digital marketing strategies. You will get your ROI(Return on Investment) without any effort.
Contact us for more details about the Tourism market in China