Beverly Center in Los Angeles gearing up for Chinese tourists

The Beverly Center, an eight-story shopping mall located at the heart of Hollywood s Film Studio Zone adjacent to famed Beverly Hills, is gearing up for a vibrant summer sales season dominated by tourists from China.

Release time : 2019-07-16 09:35:52

source : Xinhua

city of Los Angeles.

Chinese tourists racked up 1.6 billion U.S. dollars on local restaurants, hotels, retail shopping, and entertainment in 2018, which accounted for 23 percent of all international spending in the city.

At the Beverly Center, that percentage is even higher.

"Of the millions of shoppers at the Beverly Center, about 38 percent are tourists, and the vast majority of those are Chinese," Montenegro revealed.

"And the Chinese tend to spend 25 percent more than the average overseas visitor," he added.

Many Chinese visitors who come to the country to experience American culture and visit top universities with an eye to enrolling their son or daughter are also eager to take advantage of the opportunity to shop for luxury fashions, handbags, and shoes as well as things like nutritional supplements - all of which are cheaper to buy in the United States than they are in China.

These visitors are warmly welcomed at the Beverly Center, where Mandarin-speaking staff are available at the information and concierge desks. In fact, to serve and welcome the wide range of foreign visitors to the Beverly Center each year, the Beverly Center staff is proficient in eight languages, Montenegro said.

Chinese travelers are far more technologically-driven than U.S. travelers and rely heavily on the popular, Mandarin-language mobile phone apps, such as WeChat and Weibo, China's largest social and messaging apps, which they use extensively to plan their trips and to make their purchases while they travel.

The Beverly Center recognized long ago that if their outreach was not readily accessible in Mandarin on their mobile devices in their favorite social media apps, Chinese tourists would probably never read it.

"We've been China-ready for the last 10 years," said Montenegro. "And in recent years, we've been actively engaged our Chinese customers on Chinese social media, including Weibo and WeChat."

He added