Euroasia: Language, Culture and Travel

Ken @ entrance to Taj Hotel

I’ve just been thinking about the Mumbai terrorist attacks. It’s most unfortunate that once again this act of terrorism was perpetrated by Muslim extremists. I say unfortunate not just because of the many people that died, and the damage caused to the economy. More importantly, the fragile relations between Muslims and Hindus in the world’s second most populous nation will be once again put to the test. No doubt the terrorists want the Muslims and Hindus to be killing one another.

When people are angry, they can’t think straight. There’s now much talk about retaliatory attacks on Pakistan and other Muslim targets. The victims of this terrorist attack were not only the foreign tourists, but the locals. The terrorists want to strike fear and stir hatred in the hearts of ordinary Indians.

Leopold's Cafe

I really like India. I wonder if it’s because I have some good Indian friends or simply because I thrive in chaos. In any case, I am saddened to see Mumbai icons such as Leopold’s cafe and the Taj Hotel attacked.

My good friend Sam showed me around Mumbai 2 years ago. We went to Leopold’s cafe twice, once for breakfast, and a second time on New Year’s Eve, just to see how the classy Indians and foreigners celebrate the New Year. We were lucky to get a table. Being at Leopold’s was certainly more fun than the night club we went to before Leopold’s. I still remember vividly the scene at the packed club, where 90% of the patrons were male (Sam pointed out that the few girls who were there looked like call girls). Apparently, many girls are not allowed out at night.

Ken with Sam + mum @ Leopold

From walking around the streets, I can confirm that at night time there were certainly not many girls hanging out.  The Indians at Leopold’s were certainly not your everyday Indians. You can tell that they are the classy ones. The Auckland equivalent would be the trendy Ponsonby-types; cool and chic, going out to see and to be seen.

We’re lucky to be living in a country where the closest you get to a terrorist is when you play a game of Soldier of Fortune with your mates on Playstation 3. Sometimes I feel we need to start being more thankful for what we have and stop complaining about trivial things.

I wonder how many people are aware of the sheer amount of money generated by the cruise industry using Auckland as a hub. I received an email from my local business association highlighting some opportunities for the local retailers. During the 2007/08 cruise season, Auckland received $123.8 million of total cruise industry direct expenditure, about 60% of the national spend. Approximately 89,600 passenger days were spent in Auckland, around 21% of all passenger days spent in NZ. The forecast for the 2008/2009 cruise season estimates the Auckland region will see direct spending of $128 million. How many industries can boast of such a significant economic contribution?

For those interested, the ships in town soon include:

Friday 21 November: Volendam arrives and has a full exchange of up to 1,440 passengers – who are likely to be mainly American, plus 40yrs. This ship is rated 4 stars. With a full passenger exchange, expect awaiting passengers in town from around Wednesday, and former passengers to linger for a few days afterwards.

Sunday 23 November: Millennium arrives. Another full exchange of up to 2,449 passengers. She also has a crew of 1000. One of the bigger ships to visit this year. Passengers are mainly Americans over 40.

If I was in the retail business I would certainly try to hone in on this market. Businesses that would benefit include those selling luxury goods or health products to baby boomers. What an awesome way to tap into a captive audience of wealthy consumers. Probably far more effective and far cheaper than embarking on a mass marketing campaign in California.

In spite of the scary stories told in “Horror tales from Chinese tourists” in today’s Business Herald, we must not lose sight of the potential of the Chinese tourism market. It was reported that Tourism Holdings will decide in the next month whether to keep pursuing the Chinese market. Graeme West of Tourism Holdings says “We can’t be out there everywhere – we have to target where we think we can get the biggest bang for our buck. The market is there. But do we want the yield the market is providing?”

It makes commercial sense to target the market generating the highest returns. But I’m afraid that many tourism providers may be short-sighted in the same way that many language schools in the early 2000s were. Back then, the Chinese started to go overseas in huge numbers and many new language schools were opened here in a free-for-all. In the end, Chinese students stopped coming for a variety of reasons. One reason is the negative publicity that arose from adverse media reports. Cowboys in the market also did a lot of damage, by short-changing students. The Chinese began to be seen as a new goldmine, and scores of students had bad experiences with shoddy schools, greedy homestay parents, and unethical tourism providers. Understandably, ripped off students won’t have good things to say about the New Zealand experience.

Many schools had to close down, and we have significant excess capacity to this day. Does that mean that China is a bad market to target? No. We’re just getting punished for our short-sighted view of the market. There’s a sense of deja-vu with what’s happening in the tourism sector now. We can certainly learn from the experiences of the language school sector.

Chinese outbound departures more than doubled in the last five years, from 16.6 million people in 2002 to 40.9 million people in 2007. The number of affluent Chinese has increased dramatically, which bodes well for tourism. The China-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement and loosening visa restrictions are making it easier than ever for Chinese citizens to travel here.

The 2007 Neilsen China Outbound Travel Monitor Report indicated that Europe is the top dream destination for Chinese travellers, followed by Australia and New Zealand. Surely, at a time when the desire to visit New Zealand is so high, we need to be intensifying efforts to target this market, not cutting back. Rob Finlayson, manager at Tourism Holdings Limited (who looks after Rotorua’s Rainbow Springs, Kiwi Encounter and Hukafall Jet boating), was quoted as saying “All they do is the Agridome and Te Puia.” He says even if he cut his prices in half they still would not attract Chinese visitors because “at the end of the day they only have to include two paid attractions”.

Similar to various tourism providers, a number of domestic retailers are also responding in the same way. The word is there’s no reason to focus on the needs of Chinese clients because there aren’t many that buy. It begs the question: do you not have many Chinese/Asian clients because there aren’t many around, or simply because you’re not set up to deal with Chinese/Asian clients?

I don’t know how we manage to conveniently forget that 1 in 5 residents are of Asian descent in the Auckland region.

Why is it that Chinese visitors have the lowest satisfaction levels (according to Tourism NZ data) of all those who visit this country? We need to talk to our clients to find out. But can we realistically do that if none of us actually understand the language spoken by our clients, let alone their culture?

Understanding the target market and taking a long term view of the value of the Chinese market is critical to success. We need to interpret our observations through the eyes of the Chinese. Let’s not allow our perspectives to be so coloured by our cultural baggage that we fail to capitalise on significant opportunities.