Can an app clean up the overseas image of Chinese tourists?
- The Chinese-language app acts as a cultural directory, compiling around 1,500 heritage locations around Europe
- Shake to Win is aimed at the growing number of millennial travellers who are ditching the tour groups
Visitors from China arriving in Vincent van Gogh’s picturesque hometown in North Brabant, Holland, typically reflect the trope of Chinese international tourism.
A bus stops, a group of people – sometimes led by an umbrella-wielding tour guide – clamber out, wander around for a short time, snapping copious photos on mobile phones and long-lensed cameras, before piling back onto the bus and rolling onwards to the next destination.
“There’s no economic profit for our region, there’s no social profit for being in contact with other cultures for the community, so the only profit is for the tour operator,” says Frank van den Eijnden, director of the Van Gogh Heritage Foundation, on his region’s tourism from China, while on a recent trip to Hong Kong.
He was therefore delighted when Shanghai-based entrepreneur Emily Cheung showed up in Brabant last year with Chinese rapper MC Han and a business plan to transform the type of visitors the town receives, as well as the stereotypes of Chinese tourists that have formed in his community over recent decades.
“We are trying to improve the misconceptions of Chinese tourists,” says Hong Kong-raised Cheung, who has travelled to more than 60 countries. “The Chinese are getting more wealthy and they want to see the world, but there is a cultural gap.”