Scotland tourism gets China-ready with WeChat Pay

Taking the newly-launched direct flight from Beijing to Edinburgh and using Chinese mobile payment platform WeChat Pay to purchase tickets to the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, Chinese tourists taking holiday trips to Scotland this summer are finding things more convenient than ever.

“We are the first tourism business in Scotland to take on WeChat, so we are now at the very leading edge,” David Allfrey, chief executive and producer of the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, told the Xinhua News Agency.

Having visited China many times, Allfrey not only looks forward to strengthening cooperation between his Military Tattoo and Chinese art groups, but also wants to ensure his business fits with Chinese consumption preferences.

With his support, the Edinburgh Military Tattoo reached an agreement with WeChat last year to become the first institutional user of the service in Scotland.

Starting from this summer, Chinese audiences can use WeChat to pay for Edinburgh Military Tattoo tickets and souvenirs. “What we are seeing is a increasing number of Chinese visitors coming to Tattoo, buying tickets on WeChat,” said Allfrey. “We now have official accounts on WeChat and Sina Weibo to tell the story of Tattoo on Chinese social media, which is very exciting and amazing,” he added.

In Scotland, under a China Ready project initiated three years ago by the Edinburgh Tourism Action Group (ETAG), tourism businesses like Military Tattoo are joining the league to better prepare themselves for the influx of additional Chinese visitors that the new direct flights will bring.

Edinburgh, which is already the most popular UK destination for Chinese visitors after London, wants to improve its tourism sector to ensure that Edinburgh is positioned as one of the UK’s premier China-friendly destinations, according to ETAG.

The figures offered by the tourism promoting agency VisitScotland show that Edinburgh Castle alone welcomed more than 170,000 Chinese nationals in 2017, accounting for 10.4 percent of total visits to the castle.

Total spending by Chinese visitors to Scotland has increased by 414 percent, from 7 million pounds ($9 million) in 2007 to 36 million pounds.

The continuous growth of the Chinese visitor market to Edinburgh presents an opportunity for the city’s tourism sector.

Chinese visitors in Edinburgh now can see Chinese signs at many stores. In almost every Scottish wool or Scotch whisky store along the downtown Royal Mile, Chinese customers can seek help from at least one Chinese-speaking sales assistant.

The city’s leading visitor attractions, hotels and information centers offer Chinese language “Welcome to Edinburgh” guides and more tourism businesses are considering catching up with Chinese spending and payment trends.

These services are provided based on careful surveys which showed the five most common requests by Chinese tourists are free WiFi, Chinese payment services, kettles in rooms, city maps in Chinese and availability of Chinese restaurants and food.

ETAG chair Robin Worsnop said, “Our research shows that 50 percent of Edinburgh’s Chinese visitors also visit the Highlands and 38 percent head to Glasgow. With numbers like these, and the first-ever direct flight arriving from China, there has never been a better time for Scotland’s tourism businesses to get China-Ready.”