New China Toolkit website for tourism industry

A new website, the China Toolkit, is now available to help the New Zealand tourism sector deliver quality experiences to Chinese visitors.

The Toolkit is an output of the China Market Review, released earlier this year by the Prime Minister and Tourism Minister John Key. It has been funded by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and developed by Tourism New Zealand.

"One of the purposes of the China Market Review was to identify new strategies to ensure New Zealand captures greater value from the China market," says MBIE Tourism Policy Manager Robyn Henderson.

"Improving the quality of visitor experiences is a basic but essential element of this, and the development of the China Toolkit was a key recommendation from the Review." 

The website was developed by Tourism New Zealand with input from New Zealand Trade & Enterprise, the Tourism Industry Association, other tourism sector bodies and a number of private sector organisations.

Paul Yeo, Tourism New Zealand’s Industry Relations Manager who has led the project, says the China Toolkit is not a consumer website – it is designed to help businesses deliver quality services.

“The China Toolkit’s focus is to help the visitor sector develop and deliver experiences that Chinese visitors’ value and enjoy – by providing in one place a collection of useful tools that businesses can access. Many of these tools already existed; what we have done is gather them together systematically.”

Split into four compartments, each with their own ‘tool drawers’ full of links to websites, images, videos and documents, the site is organised as you would expect in an actual ‘toolbox’. 

The four compartments are:

• About China: Learn the basics about China, its people, culture and how to do business.

• Getting Ready: Making sure you are prepared for Chinese visitors: language, etiquette, food and other services.

• Market Intelligence: Tap into the wealth of information available to help with your business planning.

• Info for Visitors: Access material, much of it in Chinese, to provide to your Chinese visitors.

“We currently have around 150 ‘tools’ in the toolkit and we’re looking for more,” says Paul. 

“The needs of the industry are ever changing, as are the needs of the China visitor market. 

“As such, the site has been developed to consistently evolve and new material and tools will be added in the future to ensure it continues to be a valuable resource for the industry.

“We appreciate there will be gaps in content and encourage users to let us know their thoughts of any key items they would like to see included on the site. 

“We will also identify what items need to be specifically developed, such as training modules. These will be prioritised to be implemented in 2014.”

On-going development and administration of the website will be managed by Tourism New Zealand’s China Market Development Unit.