Ted, the Chinese are coming

My name is URL

Ireland has been voted ‘most popular destination 2012’ at a high-profile awards ceremony in Shanghai.

The annual awards, the Special Trip: The World Travel Awards, are organised by the Oriental Morning Post, a popular daily newspaper in Shanghai with about 600,000 readers. The awards celebrate excellence in travel and the winners are voted by readers of the newspaper, as well as by travel specialists from around China.

And, in a recent survey carried out by Life Style, a weekly Beijing publication with about 300,000 readers, Ireland was named the "most charming destination 2012".

http://www.businessandleadership.com/exporting/item/39072-ireland-scoops-travel/

Some good news for a change,.. though I'm sure some of you will still find a reason to moan about and doubt the result :pac:

RATM

In before the 'sure they're a great bunch of lads'

Gone Drinking

I'll be celebrating this with an oul 4 in 1 later!

debabyjesus

I heard our extensive network of chinese eateries tipped it in our favour...

Lenin Skynard

I bet it's because they feel right at home with so many places to get chickenballs with curry sauce.

Lando Griffin

They wont be long wishing they were back in China when they fork out a weeks wages for an evening meal for two and a cuppa.

castletownman

They rove us rong time

Son Of A Vidic

RATM wrote: »

In before the 'sure they're a great bunch of lads'

There's only one thing worst than the tired use of..."a great bunch of lads" and it's someone starting a post with..."in before"

davet82

Corvus Maximus wrote: »

There's only one thing worst than the tired use of..."a great bunch of lads" and it's someone starting a post with..."in before"

worst than welcoming our new masters/overlords?

Clareboy

The Chinese must be very hard up for somewhere to go if they regard this country as one of their top destinations!

MaxSteele

Old Hippy I know you're watching.

Oriental Morning Post

TheIrishGrover

Grand, they can give back some money since they took so many of our jobs (Two in my case)

Insert "They-tuk-ur-jerbs" thingie here.

ScumLord

Lando Griffin wrote: »

They wont be long wishing they were back in China when they fork out a weeks wages for an evening meal for two and a cuppa.

The Chinese are living the booming economy dream, they think spending a lot of money on something makes it good and increases their status among their peers.

Anyone

ScumLord wrote: »

The Chinese are living the booming economy dream, they think spending a lot of money on something makes it good and increases their status among their peers.

Sounds familiar, maybe they like coming over here to see what they will be like in 5 years time.

debabyjesus

SEPT 23 1989

Very hard to cater for the Chinese hospitality wise

with their wacky food and superstitions

CianRyan

debabyjesus wrote: »

My god, I remember watching that in school.

hardCopy

Clareboy wrote: »

The Chinese must be very hard up for somewhere to go if they regard this country as one of their top destinations!

Because Ireland is a kip and there's nothing to see here?

:rolleyes:

Chavways

debabyjesus wrote: »

This brings back bad memories of being stuck inside on a rainy day in Irish College watching every Irish film they could find for us.

conorhal

They aren’t going to come so forget about it.

The ‘we need Chinese tourism to save us’ meme is one of the more irritating ones out there at the moment because it’s so woefully misinformed.

Having lived with several Chinese people and discussed this with them I’ve come to learn certain facts.

The Chinese are among the highest spending foreign tourists out there, on average they spend 6 times what other tourists spend. This of course makes tourism chiefs salivate and pop trouser tents, but it doesn’t seem make them ask, why?
The answer is simple. The Chinese middle class that travels are part of a nouveau riche boom and they love to spend on luxury goods. For these goods, just as we did in the boom years, they head to New York, Paris and London. It’s all about prestige and brands. As an example of this, I once incurred the wrath of one of my Chinese flat mates when I emptied out the hot press that she had filled full of those fancy ‘Brown Thomas’ type of paper shopping bags from every shop she’d bought stuff from. You’d swear I’d thrown away their contents instead from the way she reacted.
The bald truth of the matter is that Grafton St. and Henry St. carry neither the prestige or the brands of 5th Avenue or Oxford St. and never will. We don’t have the population or the number of indigenous high spenders to sustain them. Even during the boom we didn’t. The average Irish high street has nothing to offer that any english highstreet doesn't.
The Chinese travel to shop (again a fact borne out by their spending figures), they have very little interest in sightseeing, sure some sightseeing may be done, but it’s an incidental activity and again it’s based upon prestige locations, a snap in front of the Eiffel tower impresses much more then a snap in front of the spire. They have zero interests in 1916 walking tours or Dublin pubs.
Then there is the manner in which they travel and how they like to be accommodated. Fionn Davenport, the travel writer was making this point on Newstalk last week.
The Chinese like to travel in large groups and tend to take over hotels, they want Mandarin speakers at the front desk and there are many other cultural quirks like the fact that they won’t stay on the 4th floor (because four sound too close to the Mandarin for death). They are very culturally and gastronomically conservative, they balk in horror at a ‘full Irish’ at breakfast. What they want is typically their own regional fare, so they want stuff like rice and pickled eggs for breakfast, but even then the northern Chinese won’t eat what the southern Chinese prefer and vice versa.
Now picture a group of English or American tourists arriving to a Chinese front desk and a breakfast buffet with deep fried chicken feet and you quickly see how fast you are likely to alienate 90% of your existing tourist base to chase this market, the 90% that actually want an ‘Irish experience’ rather then a Chinese one.

Sorry lads in Toursim Ireland, but Yu Ming is a fantasy on a par with leprechaun's and pot's of gold at the end of rainbows. These are traveller that would look on in horror if you tried to usherthem into a bar with an open turf fire burning on one corner and a 'straw roof'. Horror and confusion, after all, why would the travel all the way across the world to spend time in such a 'pesant enviornment'?

marcsignal

Sales of this Linguaphone tape will go through the roof

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSKcDT9DjZ0

Oranage2

A newspaper with 600 thousand readers in China would be the equivalent to the Roscommon herald - don't get your hopes up boys there ain't no Celtic dragon coming!

RobbieTheRobber

A thread about China and the Chinese.
So what do we get?
Well looking at the first few posts it seems, the usual misinformation and casual racism!

:rolleyes:

For a start.
Chinese Restaurants in Ireland bear as much resemblance to Chinese cuisine as Italian(Irish) Chippers do to Italian food.

My name is URL

Oranage2 wrote: »

A newspaper with 600 thousand readers in China would be the equivalent to the Roscommon herald - don't get your hopes up boys there ain't no Celtic dragon coming!

The point is Ireland won the award, as chosen by both readers and China's top travel specialists alike. It doesn't really matter how relatively small the readership may be.. it's still one of the most prestigious travel accolades in the country.

I don't think anyone is expecting a billion Chinese people to turn up, but it shows that Ireland has a growing market there, and that people are interested in visiting.

Be negative about it all you want though.

RobbieTheRobber

My name is URL wrote: »

The point is Ireland won the award, as chosen by both readers and China's top travel specialists alike. It doesn't really matter how relatively small the readership may be.. it's still one of the most prestigious travel accolades in the country.

I don't think anyone is expecting a billion Chinese people to turn up, but it shows that Ireland has a growing market there, and that people are interested in visiting.

Be negative about it all you want though.

It is positive, seeing as quite a bit of tourism in China is Group travel. So when Travel specialists mention this nation as a good destination that will be where they sell these group tours to.

Also there are now over 1 million millionaires or richer in china, even a tiny percentage of that would be very welcome in Ireland.

http://www.businessinsider.com/hurun-report-china-now-boasts-a-record-breaking-one-million-millionaires-2012-8


As for the posters who doubt Ireland as a destination, why not?

Ireland is renowned worldwide for its lush green landscape and for many of the rich form Chinese cities that might be what they are looking for in a destination.

AS for the Ireland not being a good destination for shopping, I know in Dublin in the more exclusive shops ( I'm thinking weirs jewelers and Brown Thomas on Grafton st, etc) they now employ native Chinese speakers to help attract Chinese tourists. These shops can help these non EU tourists claim their vat back on expensive consumer goods purchased(jewelry handbags, etc)

debabyjesus

RobbieTheRobber wrote: »

Chinese Restaurants in Ireland bear as much resemblance to Chinese cuisine as Italian(Irish) Chippers do to Italian food.

You mean they don't eat deep fried battered chicken balls and chips with a side of curry sauce? Isn't that their national dish...

conorhal

RobbieTheRobber wrote: »

As for the posters who doubt Ireland as a destination, why not?

Ireland is renowned worldwide for its lush green landscape and for many of the rich form Chinese cities that might be what they are looking for in a destination.

AS for the Ireland not being a good destination for shopping, I know in Dublin in the more exclusive shops ( I'm thinking weirs jewelers and Brown Thomas on Grafton st, etc) they now employ native Chinese speakers to help attract Chinese tourists. These shops can help these non EU tourists claim their vat back on expensive consumer goods purchased(jewelry handbags, etc)

I think I explained quite comprehensively why not. The chinese don't know what Wiers or Brown Thomas are, so where's the cache in saying that you bought something there? You don't go to New York to shop, you go to say you wen't to New York to shop, even if you could probably have picked up the same goods far more cheaply in Hong Kong.
As for our lush green landscapes, there are plenty in China too, and far more dramatic. Chinese tourists have no intrest in them, they associate them with country pesantry, and association that the nouveau riche desperately want to avoid in much the same way as the Celtic tiger cubs weekending in New York are desperate to avoid the stench of our own empoverished history lingering about them. There might be some intrest in a nice 5 star resort in the countryside, they quite like staying in castles, but again as I explained, to cater for that market you'd have to alienate the majority of your market.

RobbieTheRobber

debabyjesus wrote: »

You mean they don't eat deep fried battered chicken balls and chips with a side of curry sauce? Isn't that their national dish...

Wiki states Italian Jewish cuisine as another group of people who like Chicken balls.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_balls#In_other_cuisines

RobbieTheRobber

conorhal wrote: »

I think I explained quite comprehensively why not. The chinese don't know what Wiers or Brown Thomas are, so where's the cache in saying that you bought something there? You don't go to New York to shop, you go to say you wen't to New York to shop, even if you could probably have picked up the same goods far more cheaply in Hong Kong.
As for our lush green landscapes, there are plenty in China too, and far more dramatic. Chinese tourists have no intrest in them, they associate them with country pesantry, and association that the nouveau riche desperately want to avoid in much the same way as the Celtic tiger cubs weekending in New York are desperate to avoid the stench of our own empoverished history lingering about them. There might be some intrest in a nice 5 star resort in the countryside, they quite like staying in castles, but again as I explained, to cater for that market you'd have to alienate the majority of your market.

Conorhal, China has over 1 billion people so making massive assumptions like you have done and applying them to them all is beyond stupid!


Can I ask where you are getting your knowledge of (all) Chinese people from?



Edit: They don't care about the store they bought it in, the Chinese middle classes (i have met) are canny consumers.
They are looking for big brand names but they are also conscious of the price they pay for it.

The Chinese I have met also like to brag and so the new element that tourism in Ireland will offer over other more traveled areas gives that bragging rights.
Finally one of the big draws Ireland has over other EU countries is that we speak English which is a language of growing importance to China

conorhal

RobbieTheRobber wrote: »

Conorhal, China has over 1 billion people so making massive assumptions like you have done and applying them to them all is beyond stupid!

I'm not talking about a billion people, I'm talking about the couple million members of the Chinese nouveau riche that actually travel.

RobbieTheRobber wrote: »

Can I ask where you are getting your knowledge of (all) Chinese people from?

I asked my Chinese flatmates, and other sources such as Fionn Davenport who I quoted. Various people in the know etc.

RobbieTheRobber wrote: »

Edit: They don't care about the store they bought it in, the Chinese middle classes (i have met) are canny consumers.
They are looking for big brand names but they are also conscious of the price they pay for it.

They are very price concious I grant you, one of the reason for the big spend is that when they buy, they often buy for the whole family. But I assure you, the store does matter (hence my anecdote about the hotpress full of bags.) If they can find prestigious AND cheap they practically orgasam.

RobbieTheRobber wrote: »

The Chinese I have met also like to brag and so the new element that tourism in Ireland will offer over other more traveled areas gives that bragging rights.
Finally one of the big draws Ireland has over other EU countries is that we speak English which is a language of growing importance to China

Most Chinese couldn't point out Ireland on a map, there's few bragging rights to that.
It's only in the west that we feel the need to brag about having been somewhere remote that no other traveller has been before, where you keep up with the joneses by keeping ahead of them. That's because the advent of mass tourism means that there are no bragging rights associated with Benidorm. In China where mass tourism is a new thing they go where everybody else goes to brag about.

English is good, Mandarin is better, that's why they prefer London and New York.

RobbieTheRobber

conorhal wrote: »

I'm not talking about a billion people, I'm talking about the couple million members of the Chinese nouveau riche that actually travel.

1 million is still too being a demographic to make large assumptions about, especially when that demographic is spread across the chiense nation and so doesnt share much even amongst themselves in cultural terms.

Big differences between someone form north China and southern china.

conorhal wrote: »

I asked my Chinese flatmates, and other sources such as Fionn Davenport who I quoted. Various people in the know etc.

Fionn works for newstalk, so I take what he knows about sino/irish relationships to be very little.

conorhal wrote: »

They are very price concious I grant you, one of the reason for the big spend is that when they buy, they often buy for the whole family. But I assure you, the store does matter (hence my anecdote about the hotpress full of bags.) If they can find prestigious AND cheap they practically orgasam.

You seem to say this as if its strange, I see a hell of a lot of Irish women walk around with bags from shops they have not been in a long time (social status thing) and im sure we can also find an irish person who would be equally as annoyed at the loss of such items.

So your case study of one is well not worth very much.

To be honest the noveau rich in China care little for money they throw it about with little regard. You seem to be speaking more about the middle classes than the rich when you talk about concern for price.

conorhal wrote: »

Most Chinese couldn't point out Ireland on a map, there's few bragging rights to that.
It's only in the west that we feel the need to brag about having been somewhere remote that no other traveller has been before, where you keep up with the joneses by keeping ahead of them. That's because the advent of mass tourism means that there are no bragging rights associated with Benidorm. In China where mass tourism is a new thing they go where everybody else goes to brag about.

English is good, Mandarin is better, that's why they prefer London and New York.

A lot of chinese people couldnt point out new york on a map.
The visit to ireland of the premier Xi Jinping last year got massive media attention in China and so I can assure you they are aware of us.
Dublin was also recently twinned with Beijing (a city of over 20 million).

Do they speak much Mandarin in New york and London then?

conorhal

RobbieTheRobber wrote: »

1 million is still too being a demographic to make large assumptions about, especially when that demographic is spread across the chiense nation and so doesnt share much even amongst themselves in cultural terms.

Big differences between someone form north China and southern china.

They are prety homogenious about how they travel. As I also pointed out in my first post, that north south difference comes down to breakfast preference while abroad.

RobbieTheRobber wrote: »

You seem to say this as if its strange, I see a hell of a lot of Irish women walk around with bags from shops they have not been in a long time (social status thing) and im sure we can also find an irish person who would be equally as annoyed at the loss of such items.

So your case study of one is well not worth very much..

It was anecdote to exemplify a broader cultural value of consumerism that is pretty representitive, calm down.

RobbieTheRobber wrote: »

To be honest the noveau rich in China care little for money they throw it about with little regard. You seem to be speaking more about the middle classes than the rich when you talk about concern for price.

You raised the price issue, suggesting that 'where they shopped for goods didn't matter'. As for rich, they aren't intrested in Ireland either.

RobbieTheRobber wrote: »

A lot of chinese people couldnt point out new york on a map.
The visit to ireland of the premier Xi Jinping last year got massive media attention in China and so I can assure you they are aware of us.
Dublin was also recently twinned with Beijing (a city of over 20 million).

Do they speak much Mandarin in New york and London then?

Any big london hotel has a Manderin concierge service.

The point I'm trying to make is that China as a market is not likely to provide much of a return and Ireland is not a 'product' that interests the Chinese market, I'd love some of their cash, but Ireland will always be way down the destination list and the requirements to service that market are not achievable, so why not chase markets that fit the product? Or perhaps we let them build some Chinese super casinos (they love gambling resorts).
We're just better off not getting any hopes up that we are likely to become a 'destination' for such travellers. Advertising spending would be far more effectively used telling the Germans (a price sensitive market) that they should come here, hotels are much cheaper now that they've bankrupted the place ;-) and they're actually into the whole cultural 'green tourism' thing.

We should stick to our USPs and what we're good at, and not chase a market that won't come and would alienate our core business if it did.

RobbieTheRobber

conorhal wrote: »

They are prety homogenious about how they travel. As I also pointed out in my first post, that north south difference comes down to breakfast preference while abroad.




It was anecdote to exemplify a broader cultural value of consumerism that is pretty representitive, calm down.



You raised the price issue, suggesting that 'where they shopped for goods didn't matter'. As for rich, they aren't intrested in Ireland either.




Any big london hotel has a Manderin concierge service.

The point I'm trying to make is that China as a market is not likely to provide much of a return and Ireland is not a 'product' that interests the Chinese market, I'd love some of their cash, but Ireland will always be way down the destination list, unless perhapos we let them build some Chinese super casinos (they love gambling resorts).
We're just better off not getting any hopes up that we are likely to become a 'destination' for such travellers. Advertising spending would be far more effectively used telling the Germans (a price sensitive market) that they should come here, hotels are much cheaper now that they've bankrupted the place ;-) and they're actually into the whole cultural 'green tourism' thing.

We should stick to our USPs and what we're good at, and not chase a market that won't come and would alienate our core business if it did.

Not once have I advocated, nor was the OP's post advocating increasing spending on tourism advertisement in china.
I spoke about value for money in terms of the middle classes you linked it to the Rich Chinese.

I agree we should stick to our USP's which is exactly what we advertised during the the visit of Xi Jinping.
We showcased our natural beauty and also our Dairy farming industry (which is considered a high cost high quality product outside of ireland).

They are not pretty homogeneous, they are very heterogeneous in fact.
There are massive cultural difference separating the various regions of China.
Even Wikipedia notes the differences in different areas in China
"The area in which the culture is dominant covers a large geographical region in eastern Asia with customs and traditions varying greatly between provinces, cities, and even towns."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_culture

Zhonghua minzu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhonghua_Minzu