Cultural tourism in France: Parlez-vous Chinese?

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CULTURAL TOURISM IN FRANCE
Parlez-vous Chinese?
China Daily
Asia News Network


The Japan National Tourism Office's homepage on Weibo.com. Photo/weibo.com

France snatches Chinese market share with social networking initiatives

BANGKOK: -- To attract more Chinese tourists, some French cultural heritage institutions are opening accounts on Chinese social networks and offer information in Chinese.

The Louvre, the world famous museum in central Paris, announced last Tuesday that it had opened accounts on Weibo.com and WeChat, the two most important social networks in China. Both accounts contain information on exhibits and activities and have a guide map in Chinese.

The Palace of Versailles, a royal chateau built in 1664 in a suburb of Paris, also announced last Tuesday that it opened a WeChat account. The palace's history and information are available on WeChat in Chinese.famous site and service information in Chinese.

Le Centre des Monuments Nationaux (French National Centre for Monuments), which administrates almost 100 cultural monuments in France, has opened accounts on Chinese social networks, as has Musee d'Orsay, a museum with a huge collection of art works from the period spanning 1848 to 1914. Both hope a social media presence will expand their popularity in China.

In recent years, Chinese tourists have became the new favourites of French tourism institutes and companies, due to their increasing number and purchasing power. More and more tourist spots in France offer Chinese language service, and devote more effort to publicise China.

According to statistical data released by the Direction of the Museums of France in early 2015, the Louvre received 9.3 million visitors from throughout the world in 2014. Among them, the number of Chinese visitors was 474,000, second only to the number of visitors from the United States.

The data also shows a significant increase in Chinese tourists at the Palace of Versailles. Since January 1, 11 per cent of all visitors to the palace were from China.

In fact, tourism institutes in some countries like Japan and Australia have been advertising themselves through the Chinese social networks since 2014. Japan National Tourism Office (JNTO) has published 3,402 messages on Weibo.com, and counts 258,416 fans to date.

According to JNTO's statistics, 2.4 million Chinese tourists visited Japan in 2014, an 83-per-cent growth over 2013. During this year's Spring Festival, 359,000 Chinese tourists visited Japan, an increase of 59 percent over last year

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/life/Parlez-vous-Chinese-30261684.html


-- The Nation 2015-06-08

[RickBradford]

Wait till one of them takes a p*ss in a corner of the Louvre, or they monopolise the market for Mona Lisa selfies, and I'm sure a backlash will begin from some strata of French society ....

[MZurf]

is that the same strata of French society that welcomed Hitler's Germany.

Congratulations. That must be one of the most inane posts of the month.

[ChrisY1]

Just returned from France....there's hoards of them crawling over everything......not exactly quality tourists.

But the dollar (or in this case, the Euro) is all important.

[Publicus]

The Chinese Communist Party assures in the absolute there's nothing culturally alive or well in the People's Republic of China; it's just a place of zero culture. So it's good to see some of the PRChinese people seeking cultural attractions and foreign culture abroad.

Being open to the PRChinese people traveling abroad is in general excellent so everyone should welcome it and to assist the Chinese people to learn how to better conduct themselves among civilized people in civilized places.

The PRChinese people for example 100% believe they are bringing civilization and culture to Tibet, Xinjiang, Asia in general, so we begin to see from this gross ignorance and arrogance the high mountain of folly we have to overcome in the PRChinese belief systems and their up side down backwards values. Encouraging and supporting PRChinese tourism abroad is a right step in the right direction for them and for us.

The PRChinese people have no access to any foreign media in any way shape or form, or in any way whatsoever, so it's important as many of 'em go abroad as much and as often as possible to experience the real world.

[BKKBobby]

It would have been nice to see descriptions of items in the french museum in english, I dont like walking around in a specific order wearing headphones. Attract us who can speak english but not french too.