“We’ve also invested in Mandarin-speaking staff in our offices
and in our field staff here,” says Peter Payet, Senior Vice President for Arabian Adventures. “We’re seeing a lot more interest and requests coming in from Chinese companies.” Arabian Adventures last year hosted more than 1,000 Chinese
visitors for an event booked by automotive giant BMW and it says meetings industry business now comprises about 15 percent of its revenues from the Asian country. “We host more than 10 delegations of Chinese agents a year and
some of these groups are quite large – the last totalled more than 40 top agents,” says Payet, adding that the company is also keen to increase its share of the Indian incentive market. “We’ve had three tour groups from India this year. We’re looking to
appoint a representative office in India to help us try and break down some of the barriers. We also attend a number of trade shows and we have two sales trips planned a year to target the corporate incentive market.” Dubai’s Jumeirah Group is also scouting for business in the
emerging markets. The hotel operator has a sales force in India to funnel meeting and incentive bookings towards its properties in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, partnering with stakeholders in key Indian gateway cities. Last year, some 40 percent of the company’s Indian business could be attributed to meetings and incentives. Jumeirah Group was one of the first to tap the China market. The
company has sales offices in Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong and also operates the luxury Jumeirah Himalayas Hotel in Shanghai. Further properties are in the pipeline in five Chinese cities. “We were one of the first hospitality companies to make our
website available in Mandarin in July 2010,” says Piers Schreiber, Vice President of Corporate Communications, Jumeirah Group. “We are also actively engaged in local Chinese social media with the support of a dedicated digital marketing colleague, working through Kaixin001, Weibo, Youku – China’s answer to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – as well as with bloggers.”
Peter Payet China is now the sixth largest source market for
Jumeirah Group’s Dubai hotels, where the company employs near to 300 Chinese staff. “We see tremendous growth from this market
year on year,” says Schreiber. Atlantis The Palm, Dubai, which has dedicated group sales teams in both India and China, hosts monthly trade delegations from both countries to raise its profile as a destination. The size of the groups range from five to 50 agents, says Palmlund. “It’s a key part of our business plan.” The hotel has teamed up with banking network
Below: Jumeirah Himalayas Hotel in Shanghai
China UnionPay to offer incentives and discounts to visiting cardholders, linking Atlantis The Palm, Dubai to a network that spans more than 1.4 billion consumers. The hotel is also set to make its big screen debut in the Asian market via a starring role in the upcoming spy drama Switch. The movie, the most expensive Chinese-language film of its kind, was partly filmed at Atlantis The Palm, Dubai, exposing the brand to a wider audience. “It’s one of the biggest movies of its kind to be
launched in China and much of it was filmed here in Atlantis,” says Palmlund. “We obviously invested in that partnership to make it happen and we think it will have significant benefits for us.” Dubai-based Lama Tours also has close ties to
the subcontinent. The DMC chartered a plane in August to ferry 150 Indian travel agents to Dubai for a two-night stay, in partnership with Hyatt Hotels. The aim, says Managing Director Kulwant Singh, was to show that even during the Holy Month of Ramadan, Dubai remains a busy, attractive destination market. Lama, one of the biggest players in India’s outbound tourism market, hosted more than 1,200 incentive groups last year, ranging in size from 25 to 500 people. “We’re seeing growth of around 25 to 26 percent
per year from India,” says Singh. The company has been active in India for more than a decade. “The meetings and incentives market has vast potential, especially as India itself grows stronger in the corporate segment.”
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