PacRim Marketing Group and PRTech have published their popular Asian holiday calendar, which has been mailed to clients and partners and made available to organizations interested in marketing to Asia for nearly 25 years. The just released 2016-17 calendar includes Japanese, Chinese, and Korean holidays to help businesses with marketing programs planned around Asia’s seasonality and national holidays.
“An understanding of Asian holidays and their impact on destinations and global economies is crucial to increasing share and spend of the Asian International Traveler market,” said Dave Erdman, founder, president, and CEO of PacRim Marketing Group and PRTech. “Travel marketers can gain an edge by arming themselves with more information about these holidays so they can time campaigns strategically with pre-departure travel planning.”
To help clients with best practices in tourism marketing, PacRim has been tracking trends, holidays, and festivities in Asia since its founding in 1990. The calendar was originally printed in Japanese, but over the last five years has begun to incorporate holidays in China and Korea as well. The dates of the holidays indicate increased outbound travel from Asia, which has proven to be a boon around the globe for host countries, destinations, and local economies.
The calendars have a complete listing of Asia’s national holidays. The national holidays are festivals/days set by the federal governments. There are seven legal festivals in China recognized each year; these festivals usually give workers 3 week days off. Many take advantage of this time to travel. Chinese festivals include New Year's Day, Chinese New Year (Spring Festival), Qingming Festival, May Day, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day. In Japan, there are 15 national, government recognized holidays. Several holidays fall on consecutive days and are combined to what is known as “Golden and Silver Weeks”. These holidays fall in April/May and September respectively. Korea similarly celebrates Korean Lunar New Year and Harvest Festival a time where offices are closed for a week.
Marketers should be aware of these holidays and their line-ups when developing Asia-focused marketing plans. During Chinese Golden Week, 400,000 travelers from China visited Japan and spent nearly 100 billion yen, or US $830 million, on shopping in Japan alone last October 1 – 7, according to the China Daily News. During Japan’s last Silver Week period (September 19 – 23), when holidays aligned and provided travel opportunities, Hawaii saw an uptick in arrivals and retail spending from Japanese tourists. Marketers increase their chances of capturing share and spend of the Asian traveler markets when they plan campaigns and promotions during these important holidays. The U.S. Department of Commerce and Chinese National Tourism Administration recently declared 2016 as the U.S.-China Tourism Year, an initiative to grow tourism between the two nations—even more reason to keep an eye on trends in Asia.
Click here to download your 2016-17 Asian Holiday Calendar.