After a huge push to encourage Chinese tourists to visit Tasmania, more than 28,000 visited the state last year but not all were happy with their experience, a study has found.
Visitors complained they were greeted with closed doors after 8:00pm and one Chinese tourist’s only food option was instant noodles during a short stay, the report by the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute found.
The Department of State Growth’s training document entitled “be China ready” was criticized in the report for focusing on things like superstition rather than preparing business owners for the very different needs of Chinese tourists.
Institute director Wolfgang Georg Arlt said many tourists complained about substandard services.
“The problems the Chinese are encountering is, it seems, nobody is adapting to their special needs starting from very simple things like opening hours,” he said.
“Often tourists have very little time because in China there is no paid holidays.
“Four days is a long time from a Chinese point of view, and in the few days they want to do as much as possible.
“So when they come back [to their accommodation] and they want to do some shopping and have dinner it’s after 8:00pm or even 9:00pm and they find that most things have already closed.
“This lady we interviewed who came to Tasmania couldn’t find an open restaurant in the evening and they had to eat from what they had in their fridge in their apartment and one night they were reduced to eating cup noodles because there was nothing else to eat.”
He said most tourists would be happy to spend $50 each or more for a meal if they could find a restaurant open.
Operators should concentrate on ‘simple things’
Tourism Industry Council of Tasmania (TICT) CEO Luke Martin conceded the industry was not yet up to scratch.
“Most of us in the tourism industry would accept that we’ve got a long way to go, but it’s all relative,” he said.
“[There were] 28,000 probably mid 30,000 this financial year of Chinese visitors but in 2010 we had about 4,000 so we’ve come a long way in a relatively short amount of time.”
But Mr. Martin said Chinese tourists were a relatively small fraction the tourists coming to the state.
“I’d love restaurants in regional Tasmania to open after 8:00pm for the 30,000 Chinese visitors but I’d really love them to open for the other 1.1 million we get,” he said.
He said there was some very simple things operators could do initially.
“People want to see crayfish and having a seafood restaurant in Hobart actually display crayfish, it’s such a simple thing,” he said.
“People come to Tasmania, the seafood capital of the world, and want fresh abalone and want it in a restaurant in the middle of the capital city but can’t find it.
“No, we’re not going to have restaurants serving meals at midnight, we’re not going to have shops open at 9:00 in the middle of Coles Bay, but we can do some of those simple things.”