Visit California, the state’s destination marketing organization, has launched its first direct-to-consumer marketing campaign to promote travel from China.
Visit California will invest $1.6 million this year to attract Chinese visitors (a $1 million increase) through a social media and advertising campaign. It contracted with China-based WE Marketing Group to help advertise the California brand in China.
The campaign was announced as part of Gov. Jerry Brown’s Trade and Investment Mission to China, April 8-16. The governor, together with Visit California CEO Caroline Beteta, announced the appointment of tourism ambassador Gao Yuanyuan, a model and actress from China, during a press conference in Shanghai on Tuesday.
“California remains the go-to place for Chinese visitors who cross the Pacific to visit our country,” Gov. Brown said in a statement.
China is expected to become California’s top overseas source market in 2013, according to Beteta. Chinese visitors are anticipated to spend more than $2 billion in the state this year.
In 2011, China was California's fourth-largest overseas market with more than half a million visitors, following the U.K., Australia and Japan.
The number of Chinese visitors to California is expected to increase 113% between 2011 and 2015, for a total of 1.1 million annual arrivals in 2015.
The campaign kicked off with advertisements promoting Visit California's Sina Weibo website on 12 billboard screens throughout Shanghai on April 8, and with online banner ads on April 10. (Sina Weibo is a Chinese social media site similar to Facebook or Twitter.)
Fans of Visit California's Weibo page can participate in a quiz that will qualify them to win a trip to California. Yuanyuan is promoting the contest by encouraging her fans to participate in the quiz.
The Trade and Investment Mission to China, which was focused on strengthening trade between California and China, also included the opening of the California-China Office of Trade and Investment.
Follow Michelle Baran on Twitter @mbtravelweekly.