2022-02-16
Wilson Wu
Head of Industry, Travel & Public Sectors, Google China
I am very honored to be invited here today and to join this Beidahu Dialogue organized by WTA. My topic is “Technology Creates the Beauty of Ice and Snow, Let the World See a Beautiful China”.
As an important part of the international cultural tourism industry, inbound tourism has been a major tool instrumental for other countries to enjoy the charm of China. We need to understand the considerations and preferences of overseas users for travel in China, and accordingly develop our products and programs for snow and ice tourism to enhance the appeal of the tour in China to foreign tourists.
We think there are three directions which can help our destination governments better attract foreign tourists.
First, we need to use data. During the pandemic, in order to help the tourism industry, Google has released a series of apps free of charge for the perception of tourism destinations. Through the apps you can actually know the fastest growing destination and you can know the destination with the largest amount of inbound tourism as well as the city with the largest tourism demand. In addition, we have, through joint efforts, developed the Global Travel Data Mining Dashboard, which can further help us analyze the changing needs for routes and accommodation in the cities, and better meet the needs of those engaging in tourism, destinations, and governments to have an insight into the changing demand. For our destinations, we can customize tourism resources and elements related to snow and ice for different customer groups, so as to enhance the attraction of our domestic destinations among overseas tourists.
According to the 2021 China Inbound Tourism Industry Report released by Google, tourists from the Asia-Pacific region care more about safety and travelling conditions while the European and US guests focus more on the cultural aspects of the tourism industry in China. For the destinations, we can customize tourism resources and elements related to snow and ice for different customer groups, leverage the confidence of overseas tourists in the recovery of international tourism in the next two years, make them yearn for a ice and snow tour to China, and enhance the appeal of our domestic destinations among overseas tourists.
Second, it is about culture empowered by science and technology. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020, a lot of the museums and other destinations have taken a toll from the pandemic. Google always thinks that art has great power. So we have this Google Arts & Culture. This project would help the world understand China’s cultural heritage, promote the understanding of foreign guests of China’s art, and enhance the Chinese nation’s sense of identity and cohesion.
Since Google Arts & Culture was launched online in 2011, We have collaborated with over 2,000 museums and art institutions from more than 80 countries and regions across the world and held 10,000-plus online exhibitions. These are all free of charge. We have not collected any fee from any organization.
We believe that destination governments can leverage the Google Arts & Culture platform to continue to expand our cultural reach in a friendly, efficient, and scalable way, and to spread new stories through technology so that people can better understand our culture, our history, and our ice and snow landscape, and finally achieve a greater sense of national identity and pride.
Third, it is about smart marketing. A beautiful China is bound to be seen by the outside world. Online channels remain the most important sources of information for foreign tourists planning to visit China, with nearly 90% of potential foreign tourists accessing information related to overseas tourism via the Internet. Among them, the search engine, review website and online platform are the most important consultation channels. Leveraging influential media to provide immersive information services will help us gain the tourism market in the post-epidemic era. The tourists hope to find more content, more information about tourism, culture, customs, various modes of transportation, local delicacies and so on in a certain place. In recent years, the global attention to China has been increasing year by year, and a group of excellent creators with millions of followers have emerged, such as Li Ziqi, whose works have remarkable Chinese characteristics. Very popular among the audiences at home and abroad, their video clips have managed to attract worldwide attention while trying to promote Chinese cultural tourism.
We sincerely hope that we can work with all of you present and fellow friends in the cultural tourism industry to launch online more and better content on Chinese cultural tourism, to make technology create the beauty of ice and snow and let the world see a beautiful China.
Thank you all!