UMM: Live From China
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Mid last month, UMM represented Sundowner Breakwall Tourist Park Port Macquarie at The Promotion of Australian Thousand Miles Caravan Traveling conference, hosted by Fresh Holiday in Beijing, China.
We were there to promote a new travel concept in China – self drive holiday. This style of holiday has grown in recent years mainly as a result of a widening and more affluent Chinese middle class. And a very large middle class at that, when you consider China has a population in excess of 1,300 million people!
Despite the growing number of parks in Mainland China (currently forty, with another twenty planned in the near future), Australian self drive holidays and parks are considered world class and leading the pack.
This is was brought Sundowner Breakwall Tourist Park to Beijing to discuss Port Macquarie’s facilities, activities and amazing location of to an audience of over 300 local travel agents in Beijing. The fifteen minute presentation was eagerly received. So much so, that the first tour is already booked and is due in Australia shortly!
The other presenters on the day included Oton Wu from NSW Tourism/Destination NSW, Lyndel Gray of Caravan & Camping Industry Association NSW, Pete Moeller from One Mile Beach Holiday Parks, Wendy Gu of Gold Coast Tourism, Poh Leng Lee of Jupiters Gold Coast and Kavrine Mok of Great Adventures.
Outside the actual conference itself, spending close to a week in Beijing gave me a better understanding of Australia’s appeal as a tourist destination.
Firstly, our population and with this, its by-products.
Beijing has a population that equals Australia’s total population. With this comes the crowds, the traffic, the pollution, and everything on a MASS scale! For example, a simple hotel search for hotels on TripAdvisor will bring up in excess of 4500 hotels. Sydney – 187 (almost pathetic in comparison).
A few other mind boggling stats:
- There will be 163 cities with a population of over 1 million people by 2025 in China
- There will be 23 cities with a population of over 5 million, by 2025 in China.
- Public transport costs you 2 YUAN (40c) to get on and off anywhere in Beijing.
And there were a few myths busted:
The Chinese can’t drink. WRONG!
(consumed within an hour* )
You need to be appropriately dressed to climb the Wall. WRONG!
The Chinese are a short race. WRONG!
Being 6”4 myself, I feel a lot taller walking around the streets of Sydney.
Duck tongues are to be avoided on the menu. WRONG*
It’s still very early days for this new initiative, but the seed has been planted. Our hosts Fresh Holiday were unbelievably hospitable during our entire stay, and their enthusiasm and excitement for this project was extremely contagious and reassuring for the viability of the initiative.
Watch this space.
