China : Live streaming will bring new opportunities to the tourism industry

Live streaming in tourism has become a significant trend among Chinese tourists, transforming traditional travel experiences into interactive, digital, and real-time engagements. This trend capitalizes on the popularity of live streaming platforms like Douyin, Kuaishou, and Bilibili, and reflects the preferences of a tech-savvy, younger audience.

Here’s the GMA overview of how live streaming is used in tourism among Chinese tourists:

1. Real-Time Travel Experiences

• Virtual Tours: (hot) Live streaming allows tourists to explore destinations virtually. Travel influencers or local guides broadcast live from various attractions, providing viewers with a real-time experience of the location. This is especially popular for international destinations that viewers may be considering for future travel.
• Interactive Exploration: Viewers can request the influencer to visit specific parts of an attraction, ask questions about the location, and get immediate responses, making the experience interactive and personalized. read more

2. Enhancing Destination Appeal

• Showcasing Local Culture: Live streams often feature local festivals, cuisine, markets, and cultural performances, giving potential tourists a taste of the local lifestyle and enhancing the destination’s appeal.
• Seasonal Highlights: Broadcasters can showcase seasonal attractions, such as cherry blossoms in Japan (hot) , the Northern Lights in Scandinavia, or Yunnan top festival which can attract tourists during specific times of the year.

3. Marketing and Promotions of businesses

• Hotel and Service Reviews: Live streaming is used to review hotels, resorts, and other tourist services. Influencers walk through accommodations (hot) discuss amenities, and often negotiate real-time deals or discounts for their viewers.
• Promotional Campaigns: Tourism boards (like Thailand) and travel agencies collaborate with influencers to promote specific destinations or tourism products via live streams, often integrating viewer discounts or giveaways to boost engagement.

4. Business Impact

• Direct Bookings: Influencers can drive direct bookings by providing booking links or QR codes during their broadcasts, effectively turning the live stream into a direct sales channel.
• Support for Local Businesses: Live streams can bring attention to local businesses and hand crafts (hot), helping small operators reach a broader audience, which is particularly valuable in less touristy areas.

5. Building Trust : necessity in China

• Authentic Experiences: Viewers value the authenticity of live streams, where the unedited presentation of the travel experience can build trust and influence travel decisions more effectively than traditional advertising.
• Real-Time Feedback: Immediate reactions and comments during the live stream provide feedback to both the broadcaster and the audience, enhancing credibility and trust in the information presented.

6. Social Interaction and Community Building

• Community Engagement: Live streaming creates a sense of community among viewers, who can share their travel experiences and tips in real-time. This communal aspect can significantly enhance user engagement and loyalty to the streaming platform or the influencer.
• Follow-Up Content: Influencers often create follow-up content based on their live streams, such as detailed travel guides or Q&A sessions, further engaging their audience. KOL can crfeate better video explain Philip Chen

7. Challenges and Considerations

• Connectivity Issues: Reliable internet access is crucial for live streaming, which can be a challenge in remote or less developed tourist destinations.
• Privacy and Permissions: Live streamers need to navigate privacy concerns and local regulations regarding filming in public and private spaces.

The integration of live streaming in tourism among Chinese tourists is a testament to the evolving landscape of travel, where digital connectivity and interactive experiences are becoming just as important as the physical journey.

Douyin (Tiktok)

Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, is a leading short-video and livestreaming platform that has become increasingly popular for promoting tourism. By offering tools that allow users to create engaging, creative, and interactive content, Douyin has become a key channel for travel influencers, tourism boards, and businesses to reach a vast audience. The platform supports live broadcasts, which tourism marketers use to showcase destinations in real-time, providing virtual tours, cultural experiences, and interactive Q&A sessions to engage potential travelers. The integration of e-commerce functionalities also allows viewers to book travel experiences directly during livestreams, making it a powerful tool for driving tourism-related sales and increasing visitor engagement with destinations.

Top livestreamer “Crazy” Little Brother Yang has been actively engaging with the travel livestream sector, recently targeting Dong Yuhui, who has dedicated his channel, Walking with Hui, to travel content since its inception. The travel industry has seen a rapid, though uneven, recovery since last year. Notably, during the Dragon Boat Festival from June 8-10, travel surged with over 600 million domestic trips recorded, marking a 9.4% increase from the same period in 2023.

Philip Chen, founder of GMA explain that the power of Douyin (TikTok) to captivate Chinese tourists and turn your tourist site into their next must-visit destination.

1. Visual Feast : Craft stunning videos that bring your destination to life. Show off breathtaking views, dive into unique cultural experiences, and highlight exciting activities. It’s about giving a sneak peek into the adventure that awaits!
2. Get Interactive 😉: Use Douyin’s playful features like polls, quizzes, and interactive stickers to spark viewer participation. Ask about their travel dreams or what excites them about your spot. This not only ramps up engagement but also provides insights into your audience’s preferences.
3. Collaborate and Conquer: Team up with influential KOLs who resonate with travel and lifestyle enthusiasts. Their endorsement can amplify your message and reach.
4. Create a Buzz with Hashtags: Kickstart a hashtag challenge that invites users to post their own experiences—be it memories or bucket list entries related to your site. This can set off a sharing frenzy, boosting your visibility and drawing more eyes to your destination.

Employ these strategies on Douyin and watch your tourist spot become the talk of the town among Chinese travelers!

Kuaishou

The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) has partnered with Kuaishou, a leading short video-sharing platform based in Beijing, to organize a unique travel event for 20 key opinion leaders (KOLs) and approximately 50 crew members from China. This initiative, named “Travel Adventures Thailand Episode,” aims to showcase the high-quality tourism products and services available in Phuket, Krabi, and Phang-nga through a series of livestreams.

The event is tailored to appeal to various Chinese travel demographics including hyper millennials, families, individuals on workations, and affluent older adults, emphasizing the luxury and exclusivity of the travel experiences available. The livestreams will feature a diverse array of attractions in Southern Thailand, highlighting everything from its stunning beaches and islands to local cuisine, cultural offerings, and community-based tourism.

This livestreaming journey is anticipated to reach an audience of 50 million users, encouraging more Chinese tourists to visit these destinations, facilitated by direct flights to Phuket from Beijing and other major cities in China.

Kuaishou boasts a significant daily user base of 363 million and a monthly user base of 626 million, offering extensive exposure for this promotional travel venture.

Fliggy

Fliggy officially launched  “the house travel plan” with nearly a thousand tourism businesses and KOL’s from more than 30 countries and regions.

They will continue to bring users with more than 100 global live streaming activities every day. On Feb 23, nine well-known museums in China, including the China national museum and Sanxingdui museum, will also log on to  Taobao live streaming, allowing users to visit museums online.

China’s tourism industry will “retaliatory rebound”

According to the spokesperson of Fliggy: the merchants who actively use live streaming function can not only keep in touch with their fans but also issue coupons through live streaming, which has already identified a batch of post-epidemic travel needs.  There is no doubt that customers’ demands are still existing.

The demand for travel will not disappear completely because of the coronavirus. When the turning point comes, the epidemic will gradually become the past, and China’s travel industry will retaliatory rebound. By targeting users’ travel needs in advance through live streaming, platforms and businesses can enjoy greater profits in this wave of “retaliatory rebound”.

Data from Fliggy show that during the outbreak of the coronavirus, the time for users to view online travel texts, pictures, destination guides, live streaming, and other content continued to extend; Obviously, people’s demand for travel is still very strong, how to seize this demand is the primary concern of platforms and businesses, and live streaming is a good method.

Live streaming will bring new opportunities to the tourism industry

As a matter of fact, Fliggy has already started the live streaming service before the outbreak of the coronavirus, and some results have been achieved. According to the data provided by Fliggy, in 2019, they had more than 26,000 live shows, of which commercial live shows accounted for nearly 80%, and set a record of more than 6 million views in one show.

Besides, in addition, to live streaming for users, Fliggy also launched corresponding live streaming of lectures for merchants to help them better prepare for future development.

The coronavirus will eventually end, and what platforms and businesses need to do is build momentum to generate a quick rebound and even faster growth when hope comes.

Read also : Marketing to chinese tourists travelers

further readings :

Top Destination Marketing Strategies to Attract More Chinese Outbound Tourists (update 2020)

Africa: the new hot destination for Chinese tourists

How to Use Live Streaming in China to Attract Tourists to a Destination?