Chinese university offers to study Chinese tourists’ feedback
View(s):An interesting offer was made at a tourism conference in Sri Lanka recently – studying Chinese tourist trends and providing this data to local policymakers. Liu Yi, Deputy Head of Tourism Management and Planning in School of Tourism Management, Sun Yat-sen University in Guangdong, China, made the offer during the UN World Tourism Organisation conference in Passikudah earlier this month saying they had done a similar analysis of the Chinese inbound market in Australia. Chinese represent the world’s largest number of travellers with the country fast seen overtaking India as Sri Lanka’s primary tourism source.
Speaking to the Business Times on the sidelines of the conference, Dr. Liu said they used data from social media by Chinese tourists who had written about their experience. “We collected the data, assessed positive and negative comments they had about Australia, prepared a ranking and compared it with international ranking and other surveys.” He said they found a significant difference in ranking. “We collected about 100,000 comments from travel agents websites and others. We have developed a model that can download this data and it’s easy to conduct research for others using this model.” In the Australian study, the study revealed a difference between a Chinese and an international tourist. The international tourist focuses more on culture, experiences and more diverse tourism products. The Chinese are more focused on scenic spots, shopping and architecture, he said.