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Coordinated Effort Taps Coveted China Meetings Market

It took a perfect storm of the positive persuasion to bring the Perfect group to Orange County.

That’s the story local tourism officials like to tell about how they landed a 7,000-person group from China, beating out popular meetings and conventions market Las Vegas in what’s being dubbed the largest-ever visit by Chinese to the U.S.

Perfect (China) Co. sells health food, household, beauty and skin care products and has headquarters in ZhongShan in China’s Guangdong province. Its group of top sales and marketing executives began arriving in Orange County late last week as a reward from the company that also includes its annual meeting and awards dinner scheduled for Tuesday at the Anaheim Convention Center.

Perfect (China) coming to Orange County is the equivalent of General Motors Co. sending its top salespeople on a trip, said Orange County Visitors Association Chief Executive Ed Fuller.

“This isn’t a tour group,” he said. “This is really an incentive meeting. Incentive meetings have been something we’ve chased for all of my 45 years in the industry.”

Fuller, the former head of Marriott International, referenced his time on the hotel side of the industry, which is one of many groups that target that type of business.

The Perfect (China) group isn’t the largest for the Anaheim Convention Center—that’s a designation reserved for the annual National Association of Music Merchants trade show, which drew about 96,000 this year—but its significance goes beyond numbers. It reflects the culmination of a few years’ worth of work ramping up marketing efforts targeting the Chinese market by the visitors association and the Anaheim/Orange County Visitor & Convention Bureau via offices in Beijing and Shanghai.

Employee reward trips are particularly attractive business for those on the supply side of the equation, which, in addition to hotels, includes restaurants and tour operators. Such groups tend to stay in higher-end hotels and often have more disposable income.

The scope of the group’s impact on Orange County is broad.

Some 30 OC hotels, mostly in Anaheim, will benefit from the group’s stay, which is equivalent to 12,000 hotel room nights over the 10-day period through June 2 that it will be here. Perfect (China’s) business will have an estimated $85 million economic impact on the U.S., according to meeting planner CITS International M.I.C.E. Co., which Perfect (China) hired to coordinate the trip. It didn’t break out the number for OC, which represents the bulk of the spending despite side trips to Washington, D.C. and Las Vegas.

Tourism industry officials say a number of factors leading up to the booking were in Orange County’s favor. Those included local and state efforts, plus national marketing pushes for China business.

“It’s almost like a perfect storm that’s really never happened before in the history of this country for a market that large to open up and all these assets to open up and align,” said visitor and convention bureau President and Chief Executive Jay Burress. “It is monumental for the U.S. and for Orange County and Anaheim.”

It took a well-coordinated dance that began a few years ago, weaving together executives ranging from marketing associations and hotels to the Disneyland Resort, to make it all happen, and no one organization or individual took credit for the booking.

Representatives of the visitor and convention bureau began chatting up tourism operators a couple of years ago, an effort that gave way to site inspections, including one that involved CITS and Perfect (China) representatives making 30 hotel visits over the course of a day and a half.

Nicky Tang, Asia Pacific sales director at the Disneyland Resort, also had contacts in China who helped facilitate the relationship. The bureau did much of the coordination with the convention center, as well as planning.

Visitors association sales representatives on the ground in China also had relationships with CITS, which was evaluating OC against Las Vegas for this year’s meeting. Cvent, which helps meeting planners manage events via the cloud, ranked Vegas the third top meeting destination in the country in August.

Several CITS visits culminated with four days of meetings that included participation by the Resort at Pelican Hill, Island Hotel and Disneyland Hotel, and a series of dinners and tours.

The group’s sheer size, as well as the international component, presented local tourism and meetings officials with unique hurdles in coordinating the trip.

“There’s always a challenge with the international groups in obtaining visas to visit sometimes,” Burress said. “Contracting in this country is different than contracting in China. There are about 140 different itineraries within that time frame. It’s pretty amazing. Most groups aren’t like this, and to have the involvement of Disney, as well as Universal [Studios], it’s been involvement all over California.”

The U.S. Travel Association even helped coordinate the side trip to Washington, D.C., for some members of the group that includes meetings with senior officials and a tour of the White House.

Los Angeles International Airport installed banners welcoming the group and worked with immigration and naturalization services to help expedite arrivals.

Perfect (China) booked several hundred room nights at the Disneyland Resort’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa and will visit Disney California Adventure for a different experience from the traditional Disneyland, Tang said.

The group’s visit to Orange County also presents another opportunity for the local industry to prove its distinction from Los Angeles and San Diego counties, she said.

“What we’re trying to do is let the Chinese people understand that Los Angeles is very big, and it’s not limited to downtown Los Angeles or Universal Studios. … Just really to let them know that there’s more to [the L.A. area] than just L.A.”

The resort took steps to ensure Perfect (China) visitors to California Adventure will be taken care of.

Breakfast at Grand California includes special congee, a rice porridge, along with soy bean milk. Specially printed maps in Chinese include information on rides, shows and parades, plus suggested menu items for lunch or dinner.

“I’m really, really happy that we now have a large group that is coming to Orange County and for people to understand and realize that Orange County/Anaheim is a place where we can have conventions, and it’s really fitting for meetings and incentives and family travel,” Tang said.

More than 6,000 Perfect (China) delegates and local officials are expected to visit the convention center’s Grand Plaza on Tuesday for a photo of the delegation to serve as a record of the payoff of the more coordinated efforts to market OC over the past couple of years.

Industry executives view Perfect (China) as the start of a lift in incentive business from that country, and signs indicate that’s already happening.

The visitors association’s Beijing office helped facilitate the booking of consumer products manufacturer Shaklee China for August. The 110-member group will stay three days, with an itinerary that includes whale watching and Disneyland.

“These are the groups we always wanted,” Fuller said. “This is bringing in another segment of the market that we were hoping we might touch in the future, but here it [already] is with the Perfect group and now Shaklee coming in. This has a tremendous

business impact because (of) the dollars it brings, but more so, it sets the tone that Orange County can handle these types of groups.”

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