Promote your Amusement Park to Chinese Tourists in 2020: its Possible!
Do you want to conquer the Chinese market with your amusement park? You are in the right place, making a good decision!
Chinese people love to go to amusement parks and theme parks for thrilling experience (looking at you glass bridges of China), and they are even willing to travel across the country in order to get the experience.
Here are a few tips you should keep in mind if you want to appeal to -adrenalin addict- Chinese tourists!
Put your Amusement Park Info on the Chinese internet
You must be aware that Chinese customers do EVERYTHING online. From social life to professional life and personal life, digital tools are everywhere. They use it to look for information, compare, check reviews, and book tickets, which is the complete purchasing process, so your digital presence has to be active, appealing, and complete.
To be appealing, let them picture your amusement park
Your digital image can attract Chinese customers if there are many photos if they look good and if they can picture themselves on it. Indeed, taking pictures and showing what you are doing in your daily life and leisure type, is an important part of the journey.
You can also put videos where they will be able to see the activities better, how joyful the people are, and the atmosphere of the place. It has to be diverse, from different angles and perspectives, as informative as possible.
Master social media tools
Wechat: key tool to get consumers hooked
You cannot think about entering the Chinese market without considering opening a Wechat official account. It is the biggest and most powerful social media in China, that hundred of million Chinese use daily in any kind of situation.
To make it short, Wechat is a messaging app, used for both personal and professional life, connected to a mobile payment system: Wechat Pay. This paying tool is the first thing that proves you that this platform can be very useful in your business strategy because it means that customers can directly buy their tickets from their Wechat app, after seeing your Wechat promotion.
Because yes, you can promote on Wechat. As a company, you can have a Wechat Official Account, that will able you to:
- connect with your customers,
- show them your services,
- connect to your official website,
- keep them updated on the latest news of your park,
- make some fidelity programs,
- make promotion and special offers,
- get the information of your consumers to target them better,
- … the list is endless.
Finally, since the core function of Wechat is being a social media, customers will be able to easily share your account with their contacts, using a good word-to-mouth strategy. You can also use promotion groups, which are basically group chats where you can share and promote your services to a targeted audience (here one interested in having leisure time and going to amusement parks for example).
Dianping – Booking & Review
Also named “Dazhong Dianping” is THE platform where you can find information on any type of activities and services: in Chinese, it means “public opinion” or also “people’s review”.
The innovation which made the success of the platform is SNS (Social Networking Services). This means that it is connected to many other platforms:
- you can connect it with your Wechat Official Account
- it can also be connected to your website,
- it is also connected to the mapping tools so when customers check your company on the map they also have reviews, pictures, and information to make their decisions.
- etc
If you are looking for more insights on how to master Dianping and use it as a promotion tool, you can check this article
Dianping is the key to increasing your sales in China
Mafengwo – Go to Forum for Chinese Travelers
This platform is one of the biggest ones when talking about tourism and leisure activities. It stands as the Chinese Tripadvisor, so it is where you can find information and feedback from customers, as a community platform. You can also book online for flights, hotels, and activities tickets, so your amusement park will fit perfectly to the users of the platform.
You can have a partnership with tour agencies so then when Chinese customers will travel, there can be a day spent in your park, included in the journey planning.
Also, once you are referenced on the platform, people will be able to see you, see your promotion and activity, and individual tourists will also think about going to your amusement park during their trip.
To sell Tickets to your amusement part you have to be reputable
Have good and complete reviews
As you might know, the power of social media on Chinese consumption is insane in China, and this is due to the fact the Chinese customers rely a lot on other customers’ feedbacks. Therefore, if your amusement park has a good rating, then you can make sure to seduce them.
However, if the rating is too good, it will look suspicious and you will lose the trust of Chinese customers. This is why you have to have many customers commenting and rating your park with complete feedbacks and a majority of good reviews: they do not want to get cheated; they want to make sure that they will have a great experience.
If you are very unfamiliar with the Chinese market and rating system, we can help you to penetrate it by using undercover marketing. This process takes time, but it is efficient if it is done the right way. Indeed, if you put many fake reviews to get fast results, then it will look suspicious and be a complete fail. To succeed, the fake reviews have to look as real as possible in order to attract real customers and enough customers to actually rate and comment on your amusement park’s social media.
And of course, if your park is well-rated, then the algorithm of the platform will put it on the top of the results’ list, so it will directly appear to the customers and be a boost for your sales.
Promote your amusement park through Travels Kols
The influence of KOLs in China is insane: if the biggest KOL promotes your services, then it can be a giant boost for your park. But it is not as easy as that… the major Chinese KOLs are often very expensive, very busy, and make a very hard a strict selection of the promotion they will do.
However, you could think about privatizing the park for medium-sized KOLs, both general ones, and tourist ones so you can have a promotion all over the country.
Once again, if your amusement park looks good and is fun, then KOLs will want to share it, share their experience, and even individuals will happy to share their day in your theme park.
Therefore, this part is maybe easier for amusement parks than other businesses, as long as you work on your brand image, on every detail of the park, creating a fairytale environment.
Some concrete examples of an amusement park in China
Theme parks: the giant Disney settle in Shanghai
We could not talk about the amusement park in China without thinking about the latest Disney Resort in Shanghai, opened in 2016 which is considered one of the biggest amusement parks in the world. They have a strong brand image with the whole Disney environment, well know all over the world, and in both their communication and their ways of doing in the park (themes activities, innovative and traditional roller-coaster, iconic characters in the whole park, picturable places: the paradise to take pictures and share your amazing day in the park).
Water parks are very popular in China
Ocean Park in Hong-Kong is considered as one of the most popular amusement parks in the world: it is mainly about dolphins and animals shows, and aquariums rather than actual amusement park activities but it is what Chinese like: they are not necessarily into high sensations, they want to be able to have a good day, take pictures and share them.
However, this kind of park can be controversial due to the bad treatment they give on animals, but it is not yet a concern for Chinese customers, while it is now one in Europe for example.
Happy Valley (Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai,…)
This big chain of amusement parks is present in many cities in China and is very popular. It is more about high sensations activities and roller-coasters rather than an out-of-the-reality environment: it is focused on the activities and not on the storytelling.
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