Designation Marketing Analysis Of Beijing

1.1.Introduction to Beijing

Beijing is China’s capital city with a history dating across 3 thousand years. Being a historic city, it is still known for its modern architecture, and has many historic sites as well like the grand Forbidden City complex, the imperial palace during the Ming and Qing rules. There is Tiananmen Square which has a nearby pedestrian plaza which is also a place for Mao Zedong’s mausoleum. Beijing has remained as a capital of four dynasties (Tripadvisor.com, n.d). Its population is 11 million. It is spread across an area of 16,800 square kilometres. This vast city is the political, economic and cultural centre of People’s Republic of China. The city is situated in northeast China, and is adjoining Inner Mongolian Highland on the northwest and the Great Northern Plain on the south. The city has five rivers, which connect it to the Eastern Bohai Sea (Beijing-travels.com, n.d). In administrative sense, the municipality of the city has an equivalent status of a province and reports directly to the government.  Beijing has recently become one of the world’s most significant cities and this is because of both its historical places and the blend of modern architecture. The city had a major change in its architecture in 2008 Olympic Games where state of the art buildings were constructed including the “Nest”, which the stadium and the “Water Cube” which is the largest natatorium of the world. These structures has brought the historical Beijing in the modern limelight of 21st century (Travelchinaguide.com, n.d.).

1.2.Key attractions and venues in Beijing

Beijing is the first choice to visit by the travellers of China, people who want to witness a blend of a diverse culture. Since 800 years, Beijing has remained an economic, cultural and political centre of China.

Having an important value during several dynasties, the city has many historic places with an associated royal value. The ten must see places of Beijing are mentioned below:

  1. The magnificent Forbidden City presents the largest and best-preserved royal palace of the world.
  2. One of the “Eight Wonders of the World” is also present in Beijing in the form of The Great Wall. It is also considered as an element of world’s heritage.
  3. Tiananmen Square represents world’s largest city square and it considered as a symbol not only for Beijing but also for whole China.
  4. Since Beijing has remained as a capital city of several dynasties, hence it has historical buildings but also luxurious royal gardens.
  5. It also had a time period where it was a focus of religion therefore having it beautiful religious temples.
  6. In order to get a glimpse of local life, there are many Hutongs and Courtyards that can be visited.
  7. The city had a great influx of tourists during 2008 Olympics. It led to mixing of historical element with the modern elements which have also become a major representative part of the city. There are structures of the “Nest” or the National Stadium and National Aquatics etc.
  8. There are several beautiful parks which are a great place for a stroll. There is a Jingshan Park at the back of the Forbidden City which is a great place for an overview of the city, it was basically a royal garden. Then there is Fragrant Hills park having a great source of red maple leaves. The Taoranting Park presents a blend of Chinese historic and modern architecture skills. There is Stone Flower Cave, which is an incredible karst park.

1.3.Transportation facilities in Beijing

Beijing being the capital and municipality centre of the country, has a transport network which consist of sophisticated road network, trains and a hug airport terminal. There are five ring roads encircling the city and nine expressways, which are headed in all directions. There are additional eleven China National Highways. The transport system of Beijing is supervised by the Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport (Bonzan, 2015).

1.4.Important days of Celebration at Beijing

According to Lu and Hyn (2016), Beijing has several days of celebration or festivity spread across the year. As a visitor of the city, a glimpse of its cultural value can be seen by witnessing one of these days. Some important festivals are mentioned below:

  1. Beijing International Long-Distance Running Festival
  2. Beijing International Beer Festival
  3. Beijing 798 Art Festival
  4. Beijing International Imported Food Exhibition
  5. Beijing Chrysanthemum Exhibition
  6. Beijing’s Daxing Watermelon Festival
  7. The Grand View Garden Fair
  8. Bejing International Music Festival
  9. Huangyaguan Great Wall Marathon

1.5.SWOT analysis of Beijing

Beijing with all its grandeur structure and historical importance, has many strengths weaknesses, opportunities and threats. A few of those are mentioned below:

 

Source: data taken from Beijing-travels.com, (n.d) and Tripadvisor.com (n.d).

1.6.Entertainment in Beijing

Along with the city’s great cultural and historic sites of unique importance, like narrow bystreets of Hutong, the quadrangle courtyard of Siheyuan, there are also classical entertainment in the city like Peking Opera Performance, Acrobatics troupes. Such events keep the traditional entertainment a significant part of city’s activities. There is modern entertainment as well in the form of contemporary music club, disco places. In entertainment as well, the city represents an old meeting the new, a mix of culture and modernism. All of this adds another reason to make Beijing a worthy city of China (Ryne, 2013).

1.7.Destination marketing organizations (DMOs)

Morrison (2012) stated that in Destination marketing organizations (DMOs) have a responsibility of presenting a specified tourist destination and to help develop the local communities using traveling and tourism. DMOs are like a key for visitors and tourists for a certain destination. DMOs act like an unbiased organization that helps tourists as a point of contact, both for professional visitors and leisure travellers. DMOs help them plan their meetings, and help the travellers find cultural, historic and recreational places of interest to visit.

DMOs are also termed as convention and visitors bureau (CVB). The basic am of the organization is to promote a city, region or country to attract more visitors. DMOs enhance the marketing of the region and help in the development of tourist interests. These organizations enhance economy of a certain destination by increasing tourists’ visits. Both leisure and business visits are increased leading to more visits to shopping avenues, hotel stays etc. DMOs can go on to producing billions of dollars via direct or indirect revenue generation and taxes enhancing the destination economy. DMOs do so using their marketing and sales practices (Morrison, 2013).

The higher level of DMOs is Destination Marketing Association International (DMAI), which is a professional organization established to represent DMOs and CVBs worldwide. It was established in 1914 by sales representatives of 28 US destinations. Its initial goal was to share precise information about destinations and promotion of professional activities in order to promote conventions and meetings for visitors (Genc, 2014).

1.8.DMOs and Revenue Generation

For most part of the services provided, DMOs do not charge their customers, the business visitors, leisure tourists or the planners. Major funding of DMOs comes from occupation taxes, membership charges, and government sources (Bieger, Beritelli and Laesser, 2009).

1.9.Marketing initiatives

As per Pike (2007), the marketing objectives of DMOs are attained through web services, trading marketplaces, advertisements, using promotional material, direct sales, conducting familiarization trips for journalist community and traveling industry personnel and sponsoring related events. Usually a community resident does not do the decision for such marketing activities. The visitors usually stay at a place far from the offices of DMOs. Therefore, a member carries such activities outside the DMO community. DMOs with specified destination of international standard target both national and global markets, whereas smaller city DMOs are more focused on regional and local tourism market.

1.10.Effectiveness of DMOs

DMOs have played a major role in increasing the tourist attraction in Beijing and have rendered the city its current stature. However, despite extensively using the Internet as a major marketing initiative by the Chinese DMOs, very few reports are present to actually measure the effectiveness of the Chinese DMO websites. It is important to understand the five dimensional model of information, communication, transaction, relationship and technical merit in evaluating the effectiveness of a DMO (Pike and Page, 2014). A study performed by Li and Wang (2010) has shown that the Chinese tourism websites were not working effectively to their full capacity. Of the five dimensions, transaction and relationship were found to be the weak links in the process and can be worked upon for better marketing. Different destinations in China represent different effectiveness of their websites (Tourism excellence, 2014).

1.11.Recommendations and Future Policy

Beijing has been successful in marinating an international standard as a tourist destination. However, interest can be increased by using following recommended strategies, as suggested by Park and Gretzel, (2007) and Buhalis (2000).

  1. Effective communication with the clients lends more interest and is an indirect means of revenue generation. 
  2. The client can be leveraged but for mutual benefit. The information must not be imposed against the interest or benefit of the client.
  3. Information must not be withheld just in favour of marketing strategy. Clear honest communication can help build client interest for future visits.
  4. The visitor will share the experience if they receive the promised results.
  5. DMOs must conform to changing digital means of communication to cater to client needs. For example, TripAdvisor, VirtualTourist, WhatsApp etc. represent current mean to keeping in touch 24/7 and build a relationship with the client.
  6. DMO must use different mediums of communication for meaningful communication.
  7. The digital era presents an avenue for great marketing opportunity and competitive threat as well. Organizations with effective usage of such mediums will attract more tourists and thrive in the future.

 

 

Reference

Beijing-travels.com, n.d Introduction on Beijing. Beijing-travelscom. [Online]. Available at: http://beijing-travels.com/beijing_guide/overview/ [Accessed on: 19th February, 2016]

Bonzan, S., 2015. Introduction to Beijing Transport, [Online], Available at: http://introduction-to-beijing-transport/ [Accessed on: 18th February, 2016]

Bieger, T., Beritelli, P. and Laesser, C., 2009. Size matters!-Increasing DMO effectiveness and extending tourist destination boundaries. Turizam: Znanstveno-Stru?ni ?asopis, 57(3), pp.309-327.

Buhalis, D., 2000. Marketing the competitive destination of the future. Tourism Management, 21(1), pp.97-116.

Genc, R., 2014. Sustainable Strategies for Destination Management.. Œconomica, 10(3), pp. 23-42

Li, X. and Wang, Y., 2010. Evaluating the effectiveness of destination marketing organisations' websites: evidence from China. International journal of tourism research, 12(5), pp.536-549.

Lu, S., and Hyn, J., 2016. Important Destinations in Beijing, Journal of Tourism, 12(2), pp. 234-242

Morrison, A., 2012. Destination Management and Destination Marketing: The Platform for Excellence in Tourism Destinations. Tourism Tribune, 28(1), pp.6-9.

Morrison, A.M., 2013. Marketing and managing tourism destinations. Routledge.

Park, Y.A. and Gretzel, U., 2007. Success factors for destination marketing web sites: A qualitative meta-analysis. Journal of travel research, 46(1), pp.46-63.

Pike, S., 2007. Destination marketing organisations. Routledge.

Pike, S. and Page, S.J., 2014. Destination Marketing Organizations and destination marketing: A narrative analysis of the literature. Tourism Management, 41(2), pp.202-227.

Ryne, J., 2013. Tourism in China, Annals of Tourism, 2(3), pp. 242-253

Tourism excellence. 2014. The Destination Marketing Strategy. [Online]. Available from: http://www.tourismexcellence.com.au/growing-destinations/destination-marketing-strategy.html [Accessed on: 18th February, 2016]

Travelchinaguide.com (n.d) Beijing Facts. Travelchinaguidecom. [Online]. Available from: http://www.travelchinaguide.com/cityguides/beijing/

Tripadvisor.com (n.d). Beijing: Introduction. Tripadvisorcom. [Online]. Available from: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Travel-g294212-c1339/Beijing:China:Introduction.html

 

 

 

 


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