6 Mistakes International Hotels Make with China

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The Chinese outbound tourism market represents a huge opportunity for hotels overseas. But unfamiliarity with this market can lead to serious missteps in sales and marketing strategies that can stop hotels from achieving their full potential in attracting Chinese guests. These are six of the most common pitfalls international hotels make when they’re trying to get established in the Chinese market, and our recommendations for avoiding them.

This article is based on information shared in Dragon Trail’s March 2025 webinar on hotel marketing for Chinese outbound tourists. Watch the full webinar recording here.

1) Assuming brand awareness
Do not assume that just because your hotel or hotels are well known in your home market or in the western market, that you also enjoy high brand awareness in China. The idea that everyone in the world should know your brand already can lead to many missteps when it comes to decisions about working with the Chinese market and expectations for how the Chinese market will respond to you – and this goes for all consumer brands, not just hotels.

Digital marketing is key to building brand awareness in China, including social media marketing on Chinese channels and a Chinese website, influencer marketing and encouraging UGC on Chinese social media platforms, and PR and media engagement.

Dragon Trail has 15+ years of experience helping hotels and other international travel brands to build their brand awareness in China through websites, social media, influencer marketing, PR, and B2B outreach. Get in touch to discuss how we can ensure you’re top of mind with Chinese travelers.

2) Limited and inflexible pricing
The pricing system in the Chinese hotel market is flexible and diverse. Especially after live streaming sales by influencers became accepted as a new sales channel for tourism products, the method of purchasing room vouchers first and then booking and redeeming them later has been widely used in the hotel market. But this approach is not compatible with the revenue management systems of many international hotels, and strict policies about changes and cancellations can also be hard for the Chinese market to accept.

Additionally, many international hotels do not offer packages tailored to the Chinese market. For example, due to flight schedules, pricing and consumer habits, Chinese travel packages for the Maldives are usually for 4 or 5 nights. So if a hotel in the Maldives only has 7-night or even 9-night packages aimed at international markets, it will be difficult to sell these to Chinese travelers. Hotels should communicate with the Chinese travel trade and gain a clear understanding of how Chinese travelers are most likely to visit their destination, and then create packages to match market demands.

3) Slow response time
If it takes you a week or more to get a quote and you have to get many internal approvals before agreeing to a travel arrangement with an agent, this can make doing business in China difficult. Chinese travel agents often complain about the slow response to booking confirmations by hotels that are new to the Chinese market. The Chinese market can be quite last-minute when it comes to bookings, so the response time needs to be quick, too. Some hotels have already remedied this, for example introducing a one-hour confirmation policy, where they promise to compensate with room nights if they don’t respond to a booking request within one hour.

4) Differences in payment methods
Ideally, hotels should be able to accept Chinese payment methods like mobile payments through Alipay or WeChat Pay, or card payments through China UnionPay. Unrelated to that, another payment-related problem that often comes up is hotels that receive bookings through Chinese travel agencies but also require the traveler’s credit card details in advance, with additional stipulations that the same credit card associated with the booking must be used to pay at the property, and that the cardholder must be present. These requirements are put in place to prevent fraud, but they create a cultural clash. Chinese consumers generally will not share their credit card information with third parties, including travel agencies, because they’re worried that any request for their credit card information is financial fraud. So in this case, the requirements around payment set by the hotel will result in the travel agent being unable to successfully make the booking for the traveler.

5) Differences in commission expectations
There are also often big differences in the expectations around commission for hotels overseas and Chinese travel agents. Regardless of the commission rate, the practice of requiring full payment upfront and then refunding the commission within 30 days of the guest’s departure is not acceptable to Chinese travel agents. Chinese travel agencies prefer instead to add the commission margins themselves and then pay the net rate to the hotel, so they get the commission immediately – but this can lead to very small margins for the hotels and is generally not acceptable for international brand hotels. So what’s the solution? Our suggestion is for hotels to try to shorten the wait time, and pay the travel agency commission before 30 days.

6) Language barriers
Finally, there’s the question of language. Dragon Trail’s consumer research reveals that Chinese-speaking staff is one of the most important factors when choosing a hotel, selected by 51% of survey respondents. Chinese travel agents also highlight Chinese-language services as one of the top factors when choosing partner hotels – 25% say it’s a decisive factor. If a hotel has Chinese staff or a Chinese representative to take care of their B2B partners in China and quickly respond to inquiries, this can dramatically increase market success.

For hotels wanting to enter the Chinese market and work with local trade partners to grow their B2B business, they must be able to adapt their marketing and sales strategy. But if there are just too many internal barriers to implementing these adjustments and compromises, then a more realistic strategy is to make full use of OTA platforms to obtain all  bookings directly from Chinese consumers.

Dragon Trail offers full market representation services in China, including sales calls, representation at travel trade events, and media relations. We’re also highly experienced at website and mini-program development, social media and influencer marketing, PR and events, and travel agent training and communications. Contact us today to discuss how we can help establish and improve your hotel’s business with the Chinese outbound travel market.