English language magazines are the new cool for HNWI Chinese: iconic travel & shopping Gervois magazine now distributed to Shanghai Travelers’ Club members

GERVOIS magazine has been selected to be the new preferred global travel publication of the prestigious Shanghai Travelers’ Club, and is now distributed to its members.

GERVOIS magazine is proud to follow the steps of the iconic STC magazine, the Club’s own iconic travel magazine that has been published from 2008 to 2017.

Founded in Shanghai in 2008, the Shanghai Travelers’ Club is China’s most exclusive international luxury travel club for discerning Chinese global entrepreneurs and executives seeking experiential & authentic travel discoveries.

Its 12,000+ members have an average annual income of US$580K, travel overseas on average four times per year, and spend on average US$63,500 per year during their travels. 23% of them have invested in real estate internationally. Excluding their real estate investment abroad, they collectively spend & invest more than US$700M per year in travel related expenses.

Shanghai Travelers’ Club

As the vast majority of Chinese high net worth individuals who travel frequently overseas is now speaking Engligh fluently, the Shanghai Travelers’ Club members felt the need to partner with an English language luxury travel magazine.

The club has selected GERVOIS magazine for its acclaimed editorial content, featuring exceptional hotels, men’s fashion styling ideas, art investment, real estate investment, and their iconic travel photoshoots made by the New York based famous travel photographer EFDLT studio, Director of Photography.

Starting with the Spring 2018 issue, released on March 16th, GERVOIS magazine will proudly partner for the years to come with the Shanghai Travelers’ Club and invite its Chinese members to travel and discover the United States and the World in style.

More informations about GERVOIS magazine:
http://www.gervoisrating.com/shanghai-travelers-club/

More informations about EFDLT studio, Director of Photography:

http://www.efdltstudio.com/

https://www.instagram.com/efdltstudio/

Between a visit at the shopping mall and at their real estate agent, Chinese tourists create growth in the U.S.

The number of Chinese tourists traveling the globe has increased significantly for the last ten years, making them the largest group of travelers in the world. Now, thanks in part to a recent agreement between the U.S. and China to extend visas for short-term business travelers, tourists and students, the U.S. could see an increase in Chinese travelers in the near future.

This trend is supported by research from the latest Chinese International Travel Monitor (CITM) from Hotels.com which reveals the U.S. is the second most popular destination for Chinese travelers to visit in the next 12 months (behind France), with popular U.S. landmarks like the Grand Canyon and the Statue of Liberty topping travel wish lists.
The CITM research also identifies that, while cities in Asia Pacific remain the most popular (82 percent of Chinese travelers have visited in the past 12 months), visitors to Europe and America have increased with a year over year growth of 25 percent and 11 percent, respectively. These destinations were particularly popular with millennial travelers, with 42 percent visiting Europe and 29 percent visiting America in the past 12 months.

“The CITM reveals that the United States is one of the top five countries Chinese travelers visit the most,” said Josh Belkin, vice president and GM of the Hotels.com brand. “With tens of thousands of places to stay across the U.S., like distinctive boutiques, spacious vacation rentals and familiar chains, our site and mobile app have the perfect places for Chinese travelers of all ages and lifestyles.”

In 2016, there were 122 million outbound Chinese tourists – four percent more than in 2015 and a massive 74 percent more than in 2011, when the first CITM was published. China is already the largest source of international travelers for many countries – despite the fact only 10 percent of the population had passports in 2016.

“Chinese travelers in the United States tend to be more affluent than those who choose other destinations”, said Pierre Gervois, CEO of China Elite Focus Magazines LLC and Founder of the STC magazine, a luxury travel digital publication in Chinese Mandarin. “Real Estate investment in the United States is now the #1 real reason – and rarely stated in surveys – for affluent and wealthy Chinese outbound travelers, as they have acquired for $100 billion in U.S. Real Estate in 2016”

Source: Chinese Tourists in America Blog / CITM

Targeting Affluent Chinese shoppers the Bloomingdale’s way: Talking to the heart of Chinese tourists planning a U.S. trip

The growing purchasing power of affluent Chinese travelers is making it more important than ever for luxury brands and luxury retail brands to adopt marketing strategies to target them. With Chinese third-party mobile payment systems like Alipay and WeChat Pay beginning to set up shop in popular global tourist destinations, catering to this traveling consumer is becoming easier to do, but it’s not a brand’s only option.

Digital intelligence firm L2’s recent report “Cross-Border and Travel Retail: Connecting Digitally with China’s Shoppers” discusses ways brands can be targeting consumers online both during their journey overseas and before they set off.

“[Luxury brands] are under-serving the traveling Chinese consumer, whether it’s through their own brand site and its functionality and capability, their WeChat account, or from leveraging things like WeChat Pay and Alipay,” said Danielle Bailey, head of Asia Pacific Research at L2. “It’s a huge missed opportunity for them to not engage on these platforms that Chinese consumers are using all the time. Their phone is their number one travel accessory.”

Brands that do engage consumers digitally abroad with an omnichannel approach are using platforms like Alipay’s “Overseas Travel Channel (支付宝境外游)” to give travelers exclusive gifts, better exchange rates, or let them find deals near where they’re going, all within the app on their mobile device. WeChat’s website within an app feature gives consumers the opportunity to reserve a product online to pick up in a store and access store locators in their own language that they can hand to a taxi driver en route.
But about half of Chinese travelers are doing research on what they want to buy abroad before they leave, and luxury brands have been adopting strategies to target these consumers, according to L2.

In a dissent opinion, Pierre Gervois, Publisher of the STC magazine, a digital travel media in Chinese Mandarin, said “The most important for retailers is not the way Chinese shoppers are going to pay. It’s a technicality. Chinese Customers who want to make a purchase have plenty of options: Cash, credit Cards or WeChat Pay.  The really important thing to do is to convince them to choose a particular retailer”

“Too oftenly, we see U.S. retailers being obsessed by Chinese mobile payment systems when their strategy should be focused on branding their image to Chinese millennial travelers, and create an emotional connection with their future customers, based on their brand values”, Gervois added.

A good starting point is to provide an international store locator on their official online store in China, a strategy about 72 percent of brands employ. However, brands can also take it a step further by adding a Chinese-language travel retail site that let shoppers research the products, compare prices, read reviews, view maps that direct them to duty free shops, and even let them purchase the product online in advance so that they can simply pick it up at the airport if they’re in a hurry.
To help consumers find these pages, brands are paying for search term generated Baidu ads. L2 lists the efforts of beauty brands as an example—many brands pay for cosmetics-related key words, while others, like Lancôme, are taking a more travel-centric approach, targeting consumers researching phrases like “South Korean vacation.”

Some high end retailers, such as Bloomingdale’s, choose a more qualitative approach, and advertise in luxury digital travel publications about the U.S., like the STC magazine, available for mobile but also in digital inflight entertainment.

With a very creative advertising campaign created by China Elite Focus Magazines in New York, they organized interviews of actual Mainland Chinese customers while shopping at their Third avenue flagship store.  The story of six actual Chinese Bloomingdale’s customers has been published in the digital edition of the STC magazine: It has much more impact than buying keywords on Chinese search engines and directly talked to the heart of Chinese consumers.

While maintaining an engaging physical presence in airports and shopping malls is always important for marketing to the Chinese shopper abroad, brands that understand how to make the most of China’s digital sphere are likely going to more efficiently connect with Chinese travelers who are in the process of creating their luxury goods shopping list for their next overseas vacation.

Source: Jing Daily / Skift / Chinese Tourists Blog

Pierre Gervois: What Affluent Chinese shoppers want

Watch the exclusive interview of Pierre Gervois, Expert on marketing to very affluent Chinese travelers (and shoppers) in the U.S.

Average Chinese shopper spends $6,000 per California visit

According to the California Travel and Tourism Commission, Chinese tourists’ average spending of $6,000 per person during a trip to the US is the highest in the world. Wide selections of designer’s bags and shoes drive Chinese to California on shopping sprees. A 7,000-member Chinese tour group traveled to California last summer, and each member spent $10,000 on average during their one-week stay.
The biggest driver of this growth appears to have been the visa policy approved by Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama in 2009. At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in November 2014, the two leaders agreed to extend tourist visas to 10 years and student visas to five years.
Following the November agreement, U.S. consulates in China have recorded a 68 percent increase in visa issuance, indicating a spectacular increase in the plans for Chinese to visit the U.S. in the future, with most coming at least initially to California.
At the fall 2014 “Visit California Outlook Forum” attended by over 500 California tourism industry professionals at La Quinta Resort in Palm Springs, experts predicted that Chinese visitors will spend $2.2 billion in California in 2015 and 2016.
The China Daily reported that Kathryn Smits of International Tourism at the Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board told the Forum that airline service between China and California major gateways of Los Angeles and San Francisco has increased 44 percent.
Chinese airlines have added new direct flights from Los Angeles to cities in China or plan to add flights due to the availability of Chinese-language services to assist travelers. In July, Air China will add a third daily direct flight from Los-Angeles and Beijing and China Eastern Airlines will start direct service to Hefei, in southeast China. Both airlines credit the relaxed visa policy for accelerating growth.
The Beverly Hills Visitor Center commented that more than half of the premier stores in Beverly Hills now employ Mandarin Chinese-speaking salespersons. Most stores in Beverly Hills stores accept China’s Union Pay credit card. Five-star Beverly Hills hotels now feature Chinese-style breakfasts and house slippers year round. The Visitor Center also provides shopping maps and discount coupons printed in Chinese. The Shanghai Travelers’ Club magazine, China’s most prestigious luxury travel magazine has endorsed Beverly Hills as a top U.S. destination for High Net Worth Chinese. It helps.
Well-heeled Chinese tourists seem to like what they have seen on their visits to the Golden State. Southern California real estate agent Le Yuan told the China Daily that he had seen a double-digit increase in clients this January. Many Chinese clients can fly here to see the houses and neighborhood,” Le said. “Travel is just so easy.”
Source: Breitbart

Chinese shoppers are changing the face of retail

Wen Zhong, a 28-year-old from Shanghai has already been to France and the Netherlands . He is now flying from Schiphol airport in Amsterdam to his final stop, Finland, where he hopes to see the Northern Lights (“very exclusive”). Mr Wen is typical of a new wave of Chinese tourists: young, affluent and travelling independently, rather than on a “20-cities-in ten-days” bus tour like those that brought his predecessors. Such tours still appeal to most Chinese tourists on their first trip further afield than Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan. But a third are now organising their own travel, spending more and staying longer in each of their destinations.
Nearly one in ten international tourists worldwide is now Chinese, with 97.3m outward-bound journeys from the country last year, of which around half were for leisure. Chinese tourists spend most in total ($129 billion in 2013, followed by Americans at $86 billion) and per tax-free transaction ($1,130 compared with $494 by Russians). More than 80% say that shopping is vital to their plans, compared with 56% of Middle Eastern tourists and 48% of Russians. They are expected to buy more luxury goods next year while abroad than tourists from all other countries combined.
The dizzying pace of growth is expected to continue. Only around 5% of China’s population now own passports, and most of those who travel go to Hong Kong or Macau. But increased affluence, a trend towards longer holidays, fewer visa conditions and growing numbers of repeat travellers mean that every year more will take foreign trips, and more will venture farther. By 2020 the number of foreign trips made from China will double, predicts Aaron Fischer of CLSA, an investment firm, and spending by Chinese tourists abroad will triple.

Shops, hotels and other tourist businesses are scrambling to profit from the new arrivals. Schiphol, which has direct flights to seven Chinese cities, hands out presents in the arrivals hall around Chinese New Year and has a free translation app to point Chinese travellers to its luxury shops, all of which accept Chinese currency and Union Pay (China’s main credit card). Benno Leeser, the boss of Gassan Diamonds, a Dutch jewellery chain with 14 outlets in the airport, travels to China every year to schmooze with the travel agents who bring him his best customers.

New destinations are trying to work out how to get themselves on the itinerary. After direct airline connections, the next step is to make getting a visa easier or, better still, to bring in a visa-waiver scheme. In 2013 Chinese citizens could visit just 44 other countries without a pre-arranged visa; Taiwanese citizens could visit 130, and Americans and Britons over 170. In 2010 the European Tour Operators Association found that a quarter of Chinese who had hoped to visit Europe for leisure had abandoned their plans because of visa delays. Britain, which is outside the European Schengen free-travel area, requires its own visa—the main reason it gets just a ninth of the Chinese tourists France does.
America has started to interview Chinese visa-applicants online and allows them to pick up their visas at any of 900 bank branches, rather than the American embassy. It saw a 22% increase in Chinese visitors last year. But places with visa-waiver schemes, like the Maldives, are really thriving: last year the number of Chinese visitors to the islands increased by 45% and reached nearly a third of the 1.1m total. A boom in Chinese honeymoons helps. Beach resorts are also popular with “6+1s”—young couples travelling with one child and two sets of parents. Parents and children do adventure activities; grandparents, who are less likely to speak English, go to evening shows and cannot get lost.

The next step is to tailor language, products and services to the Chinese market. Printemps, a shop in Paris, has a dedicated entrance for Chinese tour groups; Harrods in London has 100 Union Pay terminals scattered throughout the store. Both are recruiting Mandarin-speaking staff and have Chinese-language websites and maps. Hotels increase their appeal by offering Chinese television channels, menus with pictures, and congee (Chinese porridge) for breakfast. Such details are seen as a sign of respect.
Appealing to the new Chinese horde means tapping into their love of a good romantic tale, says John Kester of the UN World Tourism Organisation. Thailand saw the number of Chinese visitors triple after a blockbuster film, “Lost in Thailand”, inspired a generation to come and sample Thai beer. Mauritius is hoping that “Five Minutes to Tomorrow”, a romance due out later this year featuring Liu Shishi, a popular actress, and partly filmed on the island, will bring it a similar bonanza.
The new generation of Chinese luxury travelers don’t rely anymore on old fashioned Chinese outbound travel agencies: They prefer to carefully select their destination and hotels with the help of specialized luxury travel magazines, such as the Shanghai Travelers’ Club magazine of Luxury Hotels of America, both published by the fast growing publishing company China Elite Focus Magazines. “We opened a new office in New York City last year” said Pierre Gervois, the Publisher. “Our editorial team is based in Shanghai, and our sales office is now in the United States, to be closer to our advertisers, mostly luxury brands who want to use our media portfolio to reach directly independent Chinese travelers”
The toughest step is getting noticed by Chinese would-be travellers, says Frank Budde of the Boston Consulting Group and co-author of “Winning the Next Billion Asian Travellers”. Nearly half of China’s population is now online, and two-thirds of those planning to travel use online material when preparing their itinerary. Since they use different search engines and social-media platforms from everywhere else, success largely depends on being blogged about on these platforms. Here, destinations can make their own luck. Tourism New Zealand’s decision to host the fairy-tale wedding of Yao Chen, an actress with 66m followers on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, in Queenstown in 2012 was rewarded with 40m posts and comments on discussion forums, 7,000 news articles—and a surge in interest from Chinese lovebirds.

Source: The Economist

Chinese shoppers are welcome in the US for the Independence Day

Yin Jie, a 35 y.o. Chinese tourist from Beijing, is looking at the Niuyue Mag black and blue sticker on the window of a fashion designer store in SoHo “If they have been recommended by Niuyue Mag, I know it’s a very creative brand” she says with a big smile, watching her iPad with the Spring issue of Niuyue Mag.

Chinese shoppers are expected to provide the much-needed momentum for retail sales in the US on Friday, even as most Americans celebrate their country’s 238th birthday with fireworks, cookouts and parades.
“We have received calls from several Chinese shoppers about July 4 sales,” said Jim Anderson, marketing director of the Chicago-based Fashion Outlets. “Many US retailers have already started Independence Day sales, and we expect the deals to continue through the holiday weekend..
A manager at the upscale-luxury South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, California, who did not want to reveal her name, said that the number of Chinese tourists, especially independent travelers, goes up during the Independence Day period.

The Fourth of July week is considered to be a boom period for retailers in New York. “Short-term four-day travel packages, especially ones with Woodbury Common on the route, have become extremely popular with Chinese tourists,” said Jasmine Xu, assistant manager of EWorld Tours, one of the largest Chinese-owned travel agencies in New York.
Woodbury Common Premium Outlets, located in Central Valley, New York, about an hour and a half outside of Manhattan, has 220 high-end stores and is owned by Premium Outlets, a subsidiary of Simon Property Group. This year, Woodbury’s sales will run until Sunday, and offer an additional 25 percent to 65 percent discount on top of their everyday savings on brands like Armani, Fendi and Burberry.
“On Monday, we had 15 Chinese tour groups at the Woodbury outlets, and on the first day of the sale, there were more than 20 tour groups from China,” said Jean Guinup, the regional vice-president for the northeast region at Simon.

“We may see even more than that, and it’s the same for all the Simon Premium Outlets on the East Coast and West Coast,” Guinup said.
“I’m sure there will be a lot of Chinese people going to Woodbury during Independence Day, based on our experience last year,” said Laurie Heller, marketing manager of Coach USA Short Line. “Many of them come especially when there are big sales, like Memorial Day or the Fourth of July.”
“I got to know about the huge sale happening there and decided to go and shop for brands like Coach, Tommy Hilfiger and Juicy Couture,” said Wang Xinji, a Chinese tourist from Shanghai, who was waiting with her boyfriend at the Port Authority Terminal in Manhattan for the shuttle bus to Woodbury Common on the first day of the sale.

Chinese shoppers abroad to boost Ferragamo’s 2014 sales

Travelling Chinese shoppers snapping up leather goods will drive sales growth in 2014 at luxury group Salvatore Ferragamo, its chief executive said on Sunday, before it showed a menswear collection aimed at promoting its Italian heritage.

Michele Norsa said the group had closed 2013 in line with its expectations, but that it was important to wait until Chinese New Year in January to make forecasts for the year.

“Travelling keeps being a strong driver of growth,” Norsa told reporters before the show at Milan men’s fashion week, singling out Chinese tourists to Europe and the United States.

Chinese luxury consumers, who make up for almost one third of the market, are increasingly shopping abroad, partly thanks to simpler visa procedures in the United States and some European countries, according to consultancy Bain & Co.

A crackdown on giving luxury goods as gifts to win the favor of public officials in China has not affected Ferragamo’s core business, Norsa said.

“Shoes are our core category and in fact a shoe is not a gift, shoes are something you buy for yourself,” Norsa said.

The group founded as a women’s footwear maker in Florence in 1927 reported net profit up 61 per cent in the first nine months of 2013.

Sunday’s menswear show featured cashmere coats in blocks of beige, brown and blue, dark pinstriped suits and bomber jackets with patterned knitted sleeves.

Creative director Massimiliano Giornetti told Reuters before the catwalk show the collection had been inspired by the idea of home comforts such as furnishings and Italian food.

“The consumer of Ferragamo really loves the idea of a kind of Italian lifestyle…enjoying life,” Giornetti said.

Attracting cash-rich tourists is especially important in Italy, where timid signs of economic recovery should also have a positive impact on consumption in 2014, Norsa said.

“We need to attract tourists and not only Chinese, of course, I’m thinking about the Russians, the Middle Easterns…the biggest potential is partially unexploited.”

Norsa said he hoped the World Expo, a five-yearly international fair which will be held in Milan next year, could help boost Ferragamo’s sales in Italy.

“In the second part of the year (2014) we could have Expo Milano generating business traffic,” he said.

(Reporting by Isla Binnie, editing by William Hardy)

Harrods boss criticises Chinese visa proposals for the UK

The boss of Harrods, the prestigious London department store, has warned that proposals by the Coalition to simplify visa applications for Chinese tourists are “smoke and mirrors”.
UK retailers have pressed the Government to overhaul the Chinese visa system because of concerns that the UK is missing out on spending to other European countries.
However, Michael Ward, the managing director of Harrods, said that measures unveiled by George Osborne, the Chancellor, during a trade mission to Beijing are likely to have little impact.
Speaking at a breakfast for the chief executives of luxury brands organised by trade body Walpole, Mr Ward said the Chancellor’s proposals were “smoke and mirrors” and would not help wealthy tourists travelling independently.
Business leaders have warned that the UK is losing £1.2bn of sales each year because Chinese visitors are put off by the complex visa process. Tourists travelling to Europe from China must apply for a separate UK visa alongside the Schengen visa system, which is cheaper and allows Chinese tourists to visit more than 25 other countries in the EU including France.
In October, Mr Osborne introduced a new pilot scheme that will allow tourists to secure a UK visa by only submitting the EU’s Schengen visa.
However, the scheme only applies to selected Chinese travel agents and Mr Ward said the proposal will “do nothing” because the government in China is clamping down on tour groups.
As part of a corruption crackdown, Chinese authorities have passed a law restricting tour groups because of concerns that the tour guides were taking bribes to take visitors to certain places.
Mr Ward said that regulations should boost the UK, but that it means the visa proposals will have minimal impact.
The Harrods boss said that most of the company’s Chinese shoppers were young consumers travelling independently of tour groups. “The Chinese consumers are very young, aged 20 to 25,” he added.
Giles English, the co-founder of watchmaker Bremont, also called for the Government to streamline the visa process for Chinese visitors.
“Anything that makes it easier is only going to help us all,” Mr English said.
The UK China Visa Alliance, which has led calls for the system to be reformed, has calculated that only 6pc of Chinese visitors to Europe obtain two visas, while 85pc obtain only a Schengen visa and just 9pc get a UK visa.
“Chinese tourists oftenly hesitate to choose London as a luxury shopping destination because of the complexity to have a visa for the UK” said Pierre Gervois, Publisher of the Shanghai Travelers’ Club magazine, a luxury travel magazine for affluent Chinese tourists. Mr Gervois added “London luxury retailers should be more proactive in lobbying the UK government for a simpler visa process for independent Chinese travelers willing to go to the UK”.

By 2015, Chinese tourists could spend more than all the world’s luxury shoppers combined

In two years, Chinese tourists could be spending as much as $194 billion a year in Europe, the US, Asia and other vacation spots. That’s according to Morgan Stanley, in a research note on luxury companies.
That figure speaks of the growing economic clout of China’s middle class—but also the irony that so many are spending their wealth abroad when one of the country’s priorities is boosting consumption at home. Last year, Chinese travelers became the world’s biggest spenders, shelling out about $102 billion overseas, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO)
There will be an estimated 100 million Chinese traveling abroad by the end of 2015, according to the UNWTO. Morgan Stanley compared the spending of these Chinese travelers with estimates from McKinsey of the luxury goods market, and found a remarkable result: by 2015, total Chinese spending abroad will exceed total global luxury sales, having been only one-third of the total in 2008.
Many of these travelers buy Western or designer goods abroad because import duties and other taxes add up to 60% to their prices in China, compared with cities like London, Paris or Hong Kong. Chinese business leaders have been calling on the government to cut taxes to lure luxury shoppers back home, but there are few signs it will do so. Its reluctance may be partly down to the association of designer goods in China with corrupt officials.
Campaigns against government graft and conspicuous consumption have also played a part in sending luxury spending abroad. In 2012, the year that then-prime-minister Wen Jiabao called for a crackdown on corruption, growth of luxury sales in China slowed to 6%, but Chinese luxury spending abroad increased 37%, according to estimates from the consultancy Bain. This year, amid president Xi Jinping’s crackdown, luxury sales have tumbled for high-end liquor, watches, and more.
Even if they’re not appreciated at home, wealthy Chinese shoppers remain coveted the world over. The city of Paris released a manual to try to help locals understand and appeal to the visitors. In Australia, a coastal town near Sydney is building a $500 million theme park that includes a full-size replica of the gates leading to Beijing’s Forbidden City.