Sydney blogs its beauty to Chinese travelers

With China's sudden emergence as a nation of intrepid globetrotters, many global tourism organizations like Destination NSW (DNSW) in Australia are rolling out innovative strategies when it comes to tapping what is now officially the world's largest outbound tourism market.

Having already announced itself as one of the more China-literate tourism and event organizations with the hugely successful Sydney Vivid program, Destination NSW has gone one step further to catching the latest China-wave with the launch of a groundbreaking new media campaign that speaks directly to visitors in a language they understand.

Destination NSW CEO, Sandra Chipchase, announced the launch of an entirely innovative suite of online videos featuring Chinese bloggers promoting Sydney and NSW as a premier adventure, food and wine destination, to tourists from China.

The launch, held last week at the 2013 Australian Tourism Exchange, features three videos for Chinese visitors, showcasing the best of Sydney's fashion, food and wine, nature and adventure destinations.

Chipchase told Xinhua, "destination NSW has developed Australia 's best digital and online marketing resources, to drive visitation from our key international markets."

Armed with a flotilla of cutting-edge digital marketing products including unique technology providing Australia's only first-person 360 digital destination tours - Destination NSW's websites have climbed into the Top 10 Travel and Accommodation websites in Australia.

According to the China Tourism Academy in its 2013 report, Chinese tourists spent 102 billion U.S. dollars offshore last year, after overtaking Germany and the U.S. with an estimated 83 million overseas trips.

The 18 percent year on year growth represents a jump equal to the population of Germany, or four times that of Australia.

The new China Blogger videos feature 12 high profile travel bloggers from mainland China with significant local audience reach with highlights including -- Rusting Sword, a photographer from Hangzhou who blogs capturing scenes of outstanding natural beauty; Flying Bear, a photographer from Shanghai, who blogs on landscape photography and local tips for tourists and YoYo's Space, a food and wine writer from Dalian, who blogs on food and wine to an audience of over 530,000 Weibo fans.

The China Blogger videos, in Mandarin with English subtitles, showcase unique visitor attractions of Australia's global city and regional NSW, to consumers with a passion for travel and exploring innovative new products.

According to Chipchase, DNSW has bold ambitions to be a market leader in multi-platform digital, social and online media in China.

"The bloggers promoted their visit to NSW while in Australia to their online audiences, and will now promote the new videos on key mainland China consumer websites, including Weibo, Youku and Sina. "

"The new China Blogger videos will also be featured on Destination NSW's new China smartphone app and our China website, cn.sydney.com."

The homepage of cn.sydney.com shows Sydney fromdifferent anglesin Chinese.

The launch of the China Blogger videos follows the exclusive promotion of Sydney as the only Asia-Pacific city to be showcased on mtvtravelco.com and profiled to MTV's 150 million global Facebook fans and online networks.

DNSW's promotions to mainland China travelers will be further expanded during 2013, with the launch of an online fishing series, iKatch, filmed on location in Sydney and around the state.

In 2012, visitors from China contributed more than 1.2 billion Australian dollars to the NSW economy.