Dear Readers,

Fresh from the Chinese New Year celebrations, it is already time to prepare for the greatest tourism show on earth: ITB Berlin Fair and Convention.

This year it is my pleasure and honour to be involved in two events during the ITB Berlin Convention. On Wednesday March 6^th from 15.00 to 15.45 h in the City Cube, Auditorium A1, I will be one of the panellists of the WTCF panel discussion “How to Market Your Destination’s products and services to Chinese Outbound Tourists”, moderated by Richard Matuzevich, Senior Manager of the Liaison Department of the World Tourism Cities Federation. The panel includes three Chinese experts, namely Jenny Cai from WTCF, Roger Qiu from Ctrip and Alice He from the Edinburgh TAG, as well as Manuel Viñuelas, a representative of Sevilla Tourism. I am sure that the audience will get state-of-the-art information about the new trends in Chinese outbound tourism and how to translate these insights into product adaptation and customised storytelling for their own services from the other panellists, who are all experts in their respective fields. I will concentrate on the new “Third Wave of Chinese outbound tourism” and the different requirements in the mix of offline and online market activities for this strongly developing market segments of “Generation Z” travellers born after 1995.

The second event will be also very exciting: On Thursday March 7^th, from 14.00 to 14.45 h in the City Cube Club, one of the “Deep Dive Sessions” will be presented. Named “Focus On China: Alibaba, Mobile Payment and The Future Of Source Market China”, it will consist of a presentation by the General Manager Europe of Alibaba, Mr. Terry von Bibra, followed by an on-stage interview I am allowed to do with the presenter. Hopefully, we will have the opportunity to talk about the latest developments in the Big Data strategy of combining the fact that a user buys a winter jacket and skiing equipment on an Alibaba-owned marketplace and/or paid by using Alipay with the offer of a winter holiday package in a ski destination by Alibaba’s travel company Fliggy – and how this can be done outside of China without getting into trouble with Data Protection laws. So do not miss the chance to look into the pockets as well as into the future of Chinese outbound travellers.

After the events and during the whole ITB the COTRI team of Dr. Minjuan Deng-Westphal (COTRI Chief Researcher), Mr. Naveen Kumar (COTRI Head of Sales) and myself will be happy to talk with our COTRI Weekly readers. If you are registered, you can use the ITB Berlin Virtual Market Place to request an appointment, otherwise just drop a line to danjus@china-outbound.com. We will be happy to update you about our new main products, the CTT China Tourism Training online training programmes, our extended COTRI Analytics data service and everything else you always wanted to know about

More good news: My LinkedIn profile as COTRI director this week cleared the next hurdle and sports now more than 7,500 connections. The lucky no. 7,500 is Mrs. Kashion Smith, Deputy Director of the Amarillo Convention & Visitor Council in Amarillo, Texas. We are happy to welcome her with a free gift of an annual subscription of COTRI Market report. We are setting our aim now even higher and hope to reach the 10,000 connections level before the summer.

I hope to meet many of you in my hometown Berlin – or somewhere else on our precious little planet soon!

For the COTRI Weekly Team – Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Georg Arlt

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