Travel
2019.07.16 14:09 GMT+8

Beverly Center in Los Angeles gearing up for Chinese tourists

Updated 2019.07.16 14:09 GMT+8
CGTN

Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, California, the United States. /VCG Photo

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.

The most popular shopping mall recently underwent a massive, three-year, 500-million-U.S.-dollar renovation to keep pace with global trends.

To enhance visitors' shopping experience, they updated mall design and fixtures, expanded the eating areas, illuminated the top floor space with giant skylights, added additional high-tech functionality, and mounted a two-story "digital art wall" featuring stunningly hypnotic video art pieces by internationally-renowned digital artist Refik Anadol.

The over 82,000-square-meters mall is a frequent destination for Chinese visitors to the LA-Beverly Hills area because it caters to luxury brands, which are favorites of Chinese consumers.

Of the nearly three million Chinese tourists who traveled to the United States last year, over one third of them picked Los Angeles as their destination of choice, ranking China second only to Mexico in the number of annual visitors to the 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.

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.

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.

Making things easier and more convenient for their foreign visitors is a bit of a "no-brainier" and has proved to be very good for business.

The Beverly Center also hosts Chinese-oriented events, such as during Chinese Lunar New Year and other festivals throughout the year, and promotes some enterprising sales, like a recent Prada Pop Up.

Source(s): China Daily
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