Top Three Learnings from This Course - Yi Yu

1.     Becoming an ecotourists

We went to several places during this trip. The most impressed me place was

Ilha Grande. The tour guide told us do not throw the toilet paper into the toilet, because toilet paper will be discharged to the sea, causing a very serious pollution of the sea. Until then, I realized how important to be an ecotourists for the society and the world. While we traveling to learned about nature and visited wilderness or undisturbed areas in natural surroundings, at the same time, we need to pay attention to the environment that we were experienced, we only have one world, even though not every aspect can be totally green, at least we need to change the environment, and improve the environment, eventually transcend to a  sustainable world. We, as tourists need to pay attention, also, the government and local people need to set up a standard for helping tourists maintain the good conditions in the local environment.

2.Data-driven methodology

       I am not tourism major, before went to the trip, I finished one individual paper by myself. Even though I went through all the key points that I need to finished the paper, I still cannot fully understand some techniques, such as UX audit, social media monitoring, mystery shopping and importance-performance analysis (IPA). To be honest, I am very dissatisfied with my individual paper. With the passage of the journey, I slowly go through the actual assessment using these techniques, after the trip, I think I improved by how to use these techniques to evaluate. For our group project, Our teams tried to improve all the attributes scores calculate methods over and over in oder to get accurate data, we know it would have some biases somehow, what we can do was to minimize the errors and to provide customers with valuable data. I do believe these techniques not only can use in the tourism industry, I also can apply those in other industries as well.

3. Ways to attract more Chinese tourists.

Chinese tourists are becoming bigger and bigger every year, if the tourism industry cannot find a way to attract Chinese tourists, they will only see others taking the cake away. However, during the 10 days that I traveled in South America, I didn’t see many Chinese tourists as I was expected. Here are some strategies for the tourism industry to attract Chinese demographic.

For hotels, if the hotels want to specifically attract baby boomer generation, the most important indicator is to provide Chinese language materials, such as newspaper, travel guide, etc. For millennials, the most necessary indicators are stable Wi-Fi and Chinese language content on website and hotels are better to have Chinese social media accounts to interact with Chinese millennials. For attractions, provide Chinese tour guide or at least the staff can speak Chinese also help. Moreover, in the theme park, try to provide Chinese signs, Chinese tour maps and Chinese audio if possible.

Despite not being popular destinations for Chinese tourist for now, however, I believe South America countries stand for a great chance of attracting more Chinese tourists in the near futures due to keep improving their services, quality and better understanding about Chinese culture.

All in all, this was my first time traveled with a group, it was an amazing experience to me. Thank you Stuart, Sharon, Freddy and all my classmates, we were work together very well, had a lot of fun in Argentina and Brazil. This is an unforgettable memory which I will not forget it.