CTW Chinese Tourist Welcome Awards

The new eBook Chinese Outbound Tourism 2017-2019 Week by Week – The 100 Best Editorials of COTRI WEEKLY brings together the 100 best editorials of the years 2017-2019. Today let’s look at the editorial of May 22, 2018 about the CTW Award.

The text reported on the 15th annual instalment of the CTW Chinese Tourist Welcome Awards, which took place at ITB China in Shanghai on May 17th, 2018, sponsored by Ctrip.
All of the 18 awards – delivered across five categories – were collected in person, with some winners coming to Shanghai from as far away as Europe especially in order to be in attendance. The quantity as well as quality of the applications and of the awarded activities for the Chinese outbound tourism market was higher than ever before.
During the 15-year lifespan on the CTW Awards this development is itself a reflection of the growing up of the market itself: while in the early years awards could be earned simply for tailoring any services to Chinese customers, in 2018 holistic approaches, targeted product adaption for defined market segments and high-quality videos had become the norm rather than the exception.

Fast forwarding two years:

• CTW Award 2020 cancelled due to CoViD-19
• ITB China 2020 cancelled
• Marketing of destinations towards Chinese – or any! – visitors much reduced
• Arrivals from China in the last two months for almost all destinations compared to the same period in 2018: -99%.

But also:

• Ctrip renamed to Trip.com, illustrating the movement of the Chinese tourism, hospitality and aviation industry onto the global market
• Governments around the world for the first time really recognizing and responding to the economic importance of tourism
• Chinese travellers eager to re-start international travel as soon as possible.

The CTW Award will continue to exist, especially as the Corona crisis has made a new awareness about the new demands and expectations of the different market segments of China’s outbound tourism necessary for all tourism service providers. One result of a greater willingness of the industry to think outside of the box will certainly be another large number of high-quality applications for the CTW Award 2021.
The eBook Chinese Outbound Tourism 2017-2019 Week by Week – The 100 Best Editorials of COTRI WEEKLY (ISBN 978-3-944757-11-7) is available at https://china-outbound.com/ebooks/
Next Friday’s topic: Chinese outbound tourism to Nepal