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China Tourism Tuesday Episode 8
12 Plays5 months ago
South Africa has the power to go viral on Rednote, but can we unlock the country's true potential?
Today, we discuss how Rednote sees South Africa, taking an analytics-based approach to everything from penguins to Afrikaburn, hunting, the Ping Pong World Championships and TTOS.
Learn about who in China is thinking about going to South Africa, who the big spenders are and what they're interested in.
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Transcript
Introduction to China Tourism Tuesday
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to China Tourism Tuesday, a discussion of marketing international tourism destinations in the China outbound tourism markets. My name is Shaul Beteng and I'm based in Shanghai, China.
00:00:15
Speaker
Good day, everybody. It's Michael Jones here, and I am speaking from Amsterdam.
Analyzing South Africa's Tourism Report
00:00:20
Speaker
Charles, you today published a report of Red Note that you read basically what I would like to call it is somewhat akin to being a Red Note State of the Union ah for South Africa um on LinkedIn. And um yeah, it big and it's also on our website.
00:00:43
Speaker
a blog on ah a blog post on our website. But I would like to talk through ah with you about it because there's some really interesting trends that have popped up. No,
Durban's Branding Success at World Table Tennis Championships
00:00:54
Speaker
absolutely. I think um now it's particularly a good time to chat about this with TTOS coming through. i' i'm I'm seeing sort of happy pictures of of tour groups coming through to Cape Town ah under of this new scheme, which is which is great.
00:01:09
Speaker
So, I mean, obviously, yeah, we want to talk about this data. This is obviously retrospective data, so it's not capturing, you know, everything that's happening right now. It's capturing maybe the last five, six, seven years worth of content.
00:01:24
Speaker
So that's a good disclaimer to keep in mind um ah as we look at all the themes that have popped up on Red Note about South Africa. This is obviously during the time when It wasn't easy to get a visa to South Africa and um it was it was quite focused on business.
00:01:41
Speaker
But it's a good it's a good starting point for a discussion, I think, Michael, just for us to start looking at what is it that China actually cares about in South Africa. So and my first question for you is out of all of the trending topics, the one that wins, and this might come as a bit of a surprise to people, is the World Table Tennis Championships in Durban in 2023.
00:02:07
Speaker
Yeah, yeah that was that was quite wild to see that. um i mean, kudos to to Durban for pulling that one off. That is a huge branding win. ah a team Almost 81 million views on you know tags related to the World Table Tennis Championships in Durban. I mean, but help you can't do much better for just China branding than pong, pretty much.
00:02:36
Speaker
Absolutely. And I mean, and then I see aligned to that Durban as a city itself got 5 million views. I'm assuming that's also somewhat, somewhat influenced by the World Championship that they had.
00:02:53
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, we in South Africa, they live in a world of mostly football, absolutely rugby world champions of the world.
00:03:05
Speaker
Yet, of course, from the the China audience perspective, ah you just have to host a table ten tennis championship once in your country and ah you shoot through the roof.
00:03:18
Speaker
No, absolutely. I mean, if we look at the the the total volume ah views for South African travel is about 101 million. And Durban, just this Durban World Cup comes close to that at 80, almost 80, yeah, 80, 81 million.
00:03:38
Speaker
So, yeah, again, very successful.
Wildlife Tourism: South Africa vs East Africa
00:03:42
Speaker
Now, the next thing that comes, that pops out, what I feel pops out quite strongly then, especially in terms of travel and tourism, it seems to be still that wildlife is here.
00:03:59
Speaker
um talk Talk a little bit about that. No, for sure. I mean, um i think in South Africa, we we are facing stiff competition from East Africa. But just in total relative to, and we can actually look at that as a comparison in future reports. I would be very interested to see um how we we sort of match up to that. Probably not as strong as, you know, the Serengeti and and so forth.
00:04:25
Speaker
but still it's i think animals and wildlife for china um as as it is probably in the in the rest of the world is a big it's a big draw card uh going down which is a big one for for cape town especially is is south african penguins and um that's also you know related but um yeah Going through the list of of total hashtags for South Africa, it just strikes you how much you know animals and wildlife still play a very strong role ah in China's interest in the country.
00:05:00
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. Like you see, as you just mentioned now, South African penguins. So that's naturally Baldur's Beach, possibly even in Betty's Bay, a little bit around in the Cape.
00:05:15
Speaker
um You don't see a category of South African lions or South African elephants, ah but penguins are leading. out of the wildlife ah specific hashtags, which is fascinating.
00:05:29
Speaker
um So, yeah, I found that really incredible. um And then there's also a lot of mentions of wildlife camps, resorts. So so that's obviously still the strong drawing card.
00:05:44
Speaker
um But what I do also find interesting, and and i was I'll be honest, I was a little bit surprised by that, But I think you explained it fairly well, saying this is also historical data going back quite some time and numerous years, that um if one just had to type in ah certain cities and add in the word travel, then Johannesburg travel comes up much higher than Cape Town travel.
00:06:16
Speaker
It does. It does, yeah.
Business Travel and Culinary Attractions in South Africa
00:06:18
Speaker
And i i think, you know, the but what that comes down to is there's already a very, you know, a very strong Chinese community in Joburg itself.
00:06:28
Speaker
And then just the magnitude of the business sector um in Joburg is going to... look it's going to It's going to predispose the numbers towards Joburg.
00:06:40
Speaker
Look, when we when we run these analytics um on up on our our own Xiaohongshu analytics platform, what we do is we will segment all hashtags into and AI-based travel um segment of content.
00:06:56
Speaker
So it it it will classify all kinds of travel under this Johannesburg travel um classification, but it captures obviously a lot of mice travel, business travel conventions. And I mean, you go on the you go down the list over it here in Joburg, what's always so interesting to me is to see how people use ah Especially exhibition ah participants and organizers, they use Xiaohongshu as a search engine for for workers and assistants and for translators to recruit, you know, short-term help setting up shows, finding translators.
00:07:37
Speaker
So just if you kind of, if you just sort of glance at the the list of all the topics for Joe Berg, you can see very much it's not that biased towards leisure.
00:07:51
Speaker
compared to if you just were to look at Cape Town. Now, with Cape Town, what's interesting is um is is the cuisine aspect. um And literally, Cape Town cuisine has 10 times the views, 75,000 views. We have 10 times the views that Joburg has at about 6,700. So and that's usual for the for the China market. They are food-obsessed travelers.
00:08:21
Speaker
But my theory is here is that Cape Town cuisine, and this is from personal experience as well, you know, living in Cape Town with my wife as well, who is Chinese.
00:08:33
Speaker
um For, shall we say, more northern style, South African food, um it's maybe something that will be interesting. um Chinese sort of visitors will try it out once or twice, but it's not something that they would necessarily have... ah you know, very natural fondness for.
00:08:54
Speaker
However, Cape Malay cuisine and sort of Cape Town fusion cuisine, definitely much more of a natural affinity because of that Asian influence coming in through the Malay ah the malay influence. And just because, you know, Cape Town is quite a cosmopolitan city, I think it draws in a lot of different influences, which is quite, um it's quite agreeable for for Chinese visitors.
00:09:18
Speaker
i I'm assuming that seafood would also ah come into play there quite strongly also. Very much so. Yeah, very much so. Yeah, I mean, ah back back to also the Johannesburg travel, I would also imagine that the fact that that you've got flights from China, the the the flights that do with Air China, they do land in Johannesburg Airport. so um So when people are researching their trips and they're flying on Air China, absolutely, they're also coming to play.
Agricultural Exports to China: A Success Story
00:09:50
Speaker
but there was also some interesting things that ah that I ah saw here. For example, the interest in, well, agriculture, the interest in South African bell peppers and ah citrus.
00:10:02
Speaker
I mean, I understand that ah the citrus... South African Citrus ah Farmers Association, ah they they are now exporting quite heavily into into South Africa. They've been working very, very hard for many years and they they've been quite successful.
00:10:21
Speaker
So so this this does seem to also be something ah quite of interest at the very least from agriculture exports ah point of view. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, i'm I'm, you know, I'm just always super happy when I can find South African citrus in supermarkets this side. It's just a, it's like one of those luxuries that you can have.
00:10:40
Speaker
Really, really nice. um Yeah, it's it's ah it's a bit of a black box, you know, in terms of over many large numbers, how um that relates to travel, but um it's good to see nonetheless.
Niche Interests: Hunting and Africa Burn
00:10:54
Speaker
ah One thing I also found very interesting was how how Africa burn and hunting has at least some following on on Chinese social media.
00:11:05
Speaker
Because, know, China's not a big hunting country. That's not one of our big source markets for hunting. But, um you know, with Xiaohongshu especially, ah because I think ah one gets such a ah strong coverage of um American Chinese, of overseas Chinese in general, from, you know, so from Singapore to Vancouver Jorburg to Germany, and the entire overseas country,
00:11:30
Speaker
Chinese community is is quite well represented on show him sure You know relative to other apps So I just shows you again, you know show who shoe is or red note at least is a is a is a very high income ah discerning and sort of market leading very adventurous kind of ah user that uses it the kind of um The kind of user who would have been to burning man, maybe in the states And then years of Africa burn in South Africa.
00:12:01
Speaker
that was super interesting to me. Yeah, ah the the hunting aspect, of however people might feel about it, I do distinctly remember quite quite a few years ago in Beijing, and there was a North American ah gentleman who, he he was a hunter and he started a company of taking Chinese people out to normally Southern Africa for hunting expeditions.
00:12:32
Speaker
And ah he was somewhat low key. And then somebody from the media sort of wrote an article about him, but but from from a negative perspective and and kind of blasting him for for hunting.
00:12:47
Speaker
And um I remember at the time he he was naturally ah quite quite upset by by the negative of coverage that he got of that media article.
00:12:58
Speaker
But he did He was interviewed a few months after that and he actually said that that negative article actually was incredible marketing for him and he all of a sudden got a flood of inquiries from high net worth Chinese business people who wanted to now all of a sudden go to Africa and go hunting for for trophy hunting.
00:13:23
Speaker
um So so that so i think that the desire has has always been there. It's just been quite a bit under the radar.
00:13:34
Speaker
Naturally, the the majority of the hunters, or trophy hunters that come to Southern Africa are normally from America. um But but ah definitely it exists in the China market.
00:13:46
Speaker
um But yeah, it's just very interesting how how this is still somewhat of of interest. Yeah, and I mean, if it's if it got any controversy in the media back then, I can tell you it's going to draw a lot of controversy and discussion out on Xiaohongshu.
00:14:04
Speaker
I mean, these are generally very environmentally concerned people. um So yeah, anti-hunting or a big ah big discussion on the on the hunting topic would be to be expected on Xiaohongshu on a Red Note for sure.
Adventure Tourism: Hiking in South Africa
00:14:19
Speaker
but What I also see interesting is um hiking, ah the the trend of South African hiking. um Naturally, I've seen how hiking is actually quite an interesting and and a trending topic on Red Note and generally in Chinese tourism circles for countries like Peru were with the Inca Trail, ah for Jordan with the Jordan Trail.
00:14:47
Speaker
um Naturally, South Africa has got fantastic hiking routes also. um so I do think that this is actually a great opportunity to really, really push that side of things also.
00:15:01
Speaker
We see that there are dedicated, ah smaller but dedicated ah tour operators in China that specialize in hiking trips and also for for running like half marathon and marathon and trail running activities.
00:15:18
Speaker
expeditions trips so to speak so so this this is also definitely something the niche market that that there's something can be pushed a lot harder on Yeah, I mean, 100% what you said there about um about hiking and about you know the more adventurous side coming out.
00:15:37
Speaker
i'm I'm quite involved with with a few groups and with a few people here who you know who do the marketing for for Nike and for many other um fitness brands onot on Red Note.
00:15:50
Speaker
And they do incredible runs around, you know, Shanghai, around Beijing, um close to where you had, or still have, you know, your the country house out in Shijadza, Michael, yeah at the at the Great Wall.
00:16:04
Speaker
and That it's become quite a phenomenon of trail running. And I mean, these are insane, insane trail runs. These are like 50Ks and up, um absolutely brutal trail runs. So, I mean, there's a bit of a stigma, I think, that's...
00:16:18
Speaker
you know People assume that China is just about the shopping. They want to get the you know the running gear and spend a few thousand RMB to look like they've done the part. But, jeez, I can tell you, and they are very, very serious about their fitness and they really push it hard. So I think um you know these are usually people with with decent incomes, with intergenerational wealth.
00:16:38
Speaker
um people who are younger but who have who aren't particularly pressed to be you know working incredibly hard because they're they're they're kind of sorted in terms of and properties in Shanghai and so on.
00:16:52
Speaker
This is just my anecdotal kind of experience. So no, I think Cape Town will be an amazing option. and I can definitely sense that. and and And while a lot of these results that we see in this report does show quite a quite quite strongly influenced by business travel, that that's evident ah with the ah trends about exhibitions, about business travel as a category, ah as a
Boosting FIT Tourism with the TTOA System
00:17:21
Speaker
theme.
00:17:21
Speaker
um Let's talk a little bit, and lastly, about, ah again, just more the leisure side of things. So it is also clear that there's been more searches about group travel than FIT travel.
00:17:36
Speaker
But like you said previously, this is quite historical. ah information leading for for many, many years. um There absolutely should be an increase of FIT travel to South Africa from China over the next coming years, especially now that visas are also easier to access through the TTOA system that people can get through get from the online travel agencies.
00:18:02
Speaker
um So so that that's all there. um Because I suppose also for tourism-related organizations and properties, FIT Travels pretty much stole the holy grail of sorts.
00:18:18
Speaker
But now, and I suppose my last question so for you is... on this topic is say for example if you are a region or a city in South Africa that's not really here if you are a province that is not necessarily doing well here if you are here but you being trumped by some of your competitors within ah the domestic market of South Africa.
00:18:47
Speaker
What would your simple advice be to how they could go about improving their awareness on Red Note Xiaomongshu?
Enhancing Visibility on Xiaohongshu
00:18:59
Speaker
Well, you know, the the lowest hanging fruit would obviously be to just show up. It's free.
00:19:05
Speaker
It's easy to do from, well, relatively easy to do from overseas to download the app to your phone. um From what I understand with Xiaohongshu internally is they are very, very keen and do have support from the government to internationalize.
00:19:20
Speaker
So they want you as a foreign destination, as a foreign user to be on the app. it's very important to them and they, they offer translate options. They try to make it as easy as possible with the means that they have for you to get on the app. So it's, I would say it's, it's definitely possible. It's definitely easy to do to just show up. And like I said, it costs you nothing.
00:19:43
Speaker
Second step would be to just sort of go go, back and look at all of the social media content that you have on your destination and on your product. And to put it out there, especially those ones that did quite well on Instagram, it definitely doesn't hurt you to just put it out there and have people be able to search your content and at least see it.
00:20:07
Speaker
that at least you are there. um Again, it doesn't cost you anything. Where you can begin to look at allocating some um cost would be to to hire somebody to actually ah formulate a more specific China strategy for you to have more consistent posts going out in Mandarin language.
00:20:26
Speaker
You could try and do it with ChatGPT where you just take what you have, write something up and put it out there, but you will obviously be missing 80% of the the idiomatic and sort of targeted side of of ah a Chinese professional person actually putting out this content.
00:20:45
Speaker
So that's that's, I would recommend the next step would be to have somebody who a formulates your content for you with the China market in mind, And then is's also responsive to inquiries because I promise you, and what we've seen with other destinations is the moment they're online. And if the, if the product resonates at all with the China markets, they will be flooded with inquiries.
00:21:09
Speaker
um So, you know, backend DMs, comments asking, you know, how do I book? what Is the visa easy to do? It's it's quite intensive and um Generally what you can do is you can have somebody who handles these inquiries a human on the other end But because they come in at all hours of the night it might also make sense to integrate deep seek as an API and there are service providers um on this side that can provide a and a Deep seek integrated API that's you know based on the training data that you've provided of this person
00:21:45
Speaker
responding to inquiries who can then do a pretty good job at if someone DMs the account at two in the morning, you know, actually getting back to them on that. That covers a good basis of presence on Xiaohongshu. From there on, you can do things like influencer marketing and fan trips, but those can be quite expensive.
00:22:05
Speaker
um you know paid promotion to to to reach a larger audience and you can really get into the weeds with um all kinds of strategic content angles and so forth um but that's that's obviously when you're looking to really go quite big with with red note and tell me like basic stuff like the uh like the 20 second tiktok videos um does that work does that resonate I mean, very, very short videos. i would say that's almost your, the I would even say, you know, they they talk about the the golden three seconds on on Chinese social media for you to be able to hook your audience. And when you look at the backend of any social media um account on Red Note or on Douyin, which is Chinese TikTok, you will see they give you a number of how many people swiped out of your video within the first two seconds.
00:23:03
Speaker
Now those will not be those people who who click like um because of your short videos or who are engaged within the first two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten seconds.
00:23:15
Speaker
those will be not Those will not be those who buy from you necessarily. But if you funnel those down from those who initially see an amazing 20 second video, With two seconds, it really grabs them.
00:23:28
Speaker
They will like a portion of them will then subscribe to your account. And then as you funnel that down, you might have a chatting group where you will introduce them within Xiao Hongshu, within Red Note to special deals, send them purchase links, discounts.
00:23:43
Speaker
Of that group, you'll then funnel them down, down, down until you would reach a sort of core of super fans who would be your regular um customers who would book regularly.
00:23:55
Speaker
And then you would also get, you know, just people who are thinking to of going to SA and then coincidentally see algorithm recommends your property or your destination or your experience to this person.
00:24:09
Speaker
And then they add that spontaneously on the spur of the moment into their itinerary or while they're in destination as well, they might also do that. Yeah. I would just also...
00:24:21
Speaker
In terms of general content and the content that would be created for Red Note, I would also just add that there's if I was sitting in South Africa and I wanted to create content for Red Note targeting the China market, would broadly go for three different categories um the most important category i'd probably go for is for the tailor-made like family and friend groups ah parents that are traveling with their child often bringing the grandparents with or bringing friends or like two families traveling together
00:24:59
Speaker
that can be also in the tailor-made groups of tour operators but it absolutely can also be self-driving ah self-driving groups uh they will be staying in the upper tier accommodation they'll be going to the best restaurants they'll be doing a lot of nature conservation a lot of educational things for the children i think that's broadly a great great category to go for um The second category I'd go for is ah more the traditional, to attract the more traditional tour operator groups, but ah targeting at seniors.
00:25:38
Speaker
So if you can create content that
Targeting Diverse Traveler Demographics
00:25:40
Speaker
shows how your product is kind of senior traveler friendly and supportive and safe and everything like that, I think that's another great category to be in.
00:25:51
Speaker
And then lastly, yeah, of course, not to exclude um the younger folk, the But by that, I mean people that are young professionals, people in their late 20s, early 30s that don't have children yet.
00:26:04
Speaker
um Absolutely self-drive. Absolutely. They're going to be eating at the best restaurants, experiencing ah the best of the cuisine world. So, yeah, I would advise that those are three broad categories of content that one should tailor your content towards.
00:26:23
Speaker
Absolutely. I think that's spot on, Michael. um Yeah, looking at at people who have time and who have money, who would be able to make this kind of trip because, you know, as of as of COVID, it's people who, you know, skew predominantly towards ah Red Note, who have the who have the means to be able to travel this far.
00:26:43
Speaker
And for this long, they have the spending power as well. And Blastishow, do you have any last ah thoughts or comments about so about this report that came out?
Growth in Smaller Destinations and China's Discovery Ability
00:26:55
Speaker
Obviously, I'm very curious to see what's going to, sort of on a rolling basis, what's going to be happening with these with these numbers.
00:27:03
Speaker
I suspect we're going to see um much more development in you know smaller destinations, um ah where be it, you know, sort of Stellenbosch, Franschhoek, you know, the PE area, um some destinations like Namakwa land.
00:27:22
Speaker
um As the visas get easier, as travel picks up, we're going to see basically a very nice update in this data set. of you know what exactly people are doing, where they're going, um what's new about South Africa that China really likes. Because i mean Chinese people have a unique ability to find out new ways, you know provided that it's safe, provided that it's fairly easy to explore.
00:27:47
Speaker
they have an exceptional talent for finding out new, interesting ways. And, you know, the the algorithm is is biased in South Africa's favor because we, you know, um the the algorithm is looking for interesting new content and Chinese social media users want a bigger share of attention like any social media user.
00:28:08
Speaker
So we have a lot of new things to offer. We have a new we have a lot of... unbelievable what they call ip stories to tell places to go things to eat just new crazy stuff so i think i'm i'm personally just very interested to see how china kind of experiences this new south africa so they can finally get in again Absolutely.
00:28:33
Speaker
um Well, great, Sean. Thank you very much. And ah yeah, for our listeners, until the next week, thank you for your time. And if you like this podcast, please subscribe and we'll catch you one week again later.
00:28:50
Speaker
Great. Thanks, Michael.
00:28:54
Speaker
If you have any questions or comments about the topics discussed in today's episode, feel free to send us an email at marketing at
00:29:07
Speaker
We look forward to hearing from you.