Back to mass tourism?
Roger Federer is said to attract Chinese guests to Switzerland
Switzerland Tourism wants to bring Chinese guests back to Switzerland with an advertising offensive. Before the pandemic, the flow of guests from China grew significantly year after year. Discussions about mass tourism are also returning with the campaign.
1/5
With Roger Federer, Switzerland Tourism wants to bring Chinese tourists back to Switzerland.
Even after the end of his tennis career, Roger Federer (41) is the best Swiss brand ambassador: the former tennis star is also very popular in China. Switzerland Tourism wants to use this potential for an advertising offensive in the country with its more than 1.4 billion inhabitants, as the “NZZ am Sonntag” reports.
The campaign starts this month and is expected to last throughout the year. This is hardly a coincidence, as the Chinese government abandoned its rigorous zero-Covid policy a month ago. For two years, China’s population could hardly travel abroad because of the strict Covid rules.
Chinese guests spend 380 francs a day
As early as this year, there are said to be 800,000 overnight stays in Swiss hotels by Chinese guests, around half as many as in 2019. In three years it should be more than twice as many.
Until the corona pandemic, China was one of the most important growth markets for Swiss tourism. The number of hotel overnight stays by Chinese guests has increased by an average of 17 percent over several years.
In addition to hotels and mountain railways, luxury shops that sell jewelry or watches benefit from the Chinese guests. They spend an average of 380 francs every day in Switzerland, while Swiss people only spend 160 francs.
Is mass tourism returning?
But with the increasing number of tourists from China, there were also discussions about mass tourism in Switzerland before the pandemic. Busloads full of guests from China, who then made a pilgrimage through the shopping miles, landed in Interlaken BE and Lucerne in particular. The flow of tourists was too much for many people in Lucerne, as a survey by the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts in 2020 showed.
Not everyone likes the fact that these streams of guests could now return: “In 2019, the population had had enough of the tourist masses. She was able to take a deep breath for two years now,” says the former Vice President of Switzerland Tourism, Peter Vollmer (76), to “NZZ am Sonntag”. The hotelier would have liked Swiss tourism to be realigned after the pandemic. “Swiss people will no longer participate at some point.”
However, as Switzerland Tourism notes to the “NZZaS”, the focus is on premium guests and individual tourists. The guest segment from China has changed in recent years. The Chinese middle class is increasingly traveling with family or friends. The next few months will show which guest groups the advertising campaign with Roger Federer will ultimately attract. (smt)