What is Golden Week?

We’re excited to welcome OMG Ethnic, the multicultural consultancy of Omnicom Media Group UK, to our blog for their first monthly post. Each month they’ll be shining a light on the growing communities of diverse cultures and the various opportunities available to brands to engage with them.

Do you know that London is the second most popular city in the world for retail tourism? Average spend per transaction is £1,906 for Qataris. However, few brands have been actively tapping into the opportunity.

Retail tourism

Source: Telegraph

While this is a rather fragmented market where each segment is unique in its own way and often requires bespoke approaches to engage, there are some key opportunities that brands can leverage.

For example, Golden Week is a semi-annual 7-day national holiday (1st – 7th Oct 2015) in China. Along with Chinese New Year and the summer holiday, it’s among the key times for international tourists to come to the UK.

In 2014, there were 150,000 visitors from China with an average spend per visit of £3,024. The number of visitors is expected to grow to 420,000 by 2021 (Source: VisitBritain). According to GlobalBlue, 58% of the spend by Chinese tourists is on shopping (vs 18% on accommodation and11% on transportation) This represents a great opportunity, especially for retail, travel  and hospitality brands in the UK.

There are some easy wins for reaching travellers – before their trip, as they arrive and during their stay. For example tapping into their planning behaviours before they come, leveraging key opinion leaders on Chinese social media channels like Weibo/Wechat, using OOH at the airports as well as through the hotels and their mobile devices.

However, for a segment that has such strong potential, it’s worth developing a long-term engagement strategy, which may involve bespoke content, tactical and contextual media placement across various channels in the UK as well as in the home countries. It may not be a simple and straight forward job, but the reward can be high for brands that get it right.

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OMD UK

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