Aberdeen bids to lure lucrative Chinese tourists

The oil capital of Europe hopes a combination of golf, whisky and history will lure wealthy Chinese

The oil capital of Europe hopes a combination of golf, whisky and history will lure wealthy Chinese (Getty)

Its proximity to the North Sea’s oil rigs and their unrelenting production of black gold has seen it nicknamed the “oil capital of Europe”. But Aberdeen now has a different revenue stream in its sights: the seemingly bottomless pockets of Chinese tourists.

Tourism chiefs in the city have launched a new drive to market Aberdeen as a major Chinese travel destination, with the aim of luring the country’s rapidly growing numbers of upwardly mobile tourists from the boutique shopping centres of London to the rugged north-east coast of Scotland.

VisitAberdeen, the city’s tourism agency, believes that a cultural combination of golf, whisky and historical sites makes the area “the perfect destination” for travelling Chinese. More than 60 golf courses lie within an hour’s drive of Aberdeen – including Donald Trump’s much disputed links in Balmedie just north of the city.

Steve Harris, the agency’s chief executive, said getting a slice of the lucrative Chinese travel market had been one of its aims from “day one”, but that the country’s recent massive investment in North Sea oil had sped things up, as it had raised Aberdeen’s profile among Chinese businessmen.

He admitted that the city was still “pretty low” on the list of places that the average Chinese tourist would want to visit, but that the new drive was the “first attempt to do something about that”.

“Research on the Chinese market suggests that yes, of course they like to go and do the capital cities – Paris, London, whatever – but they also like to go places where other people haven’t been. We think our very strong offering of golf, whisky, castles, history and the outdoors is the right product for the market – it’s just a case of communicating it,” he said.

To do this, the agency has created a special Chinese-language website which will be hosted behind the country’s notoriously sensitive firewall, telling potential tourists why they should visit Aberdeen and how to get there from London. The city will also be advertised at a series of major Chinese travel conferences.

Although no target has yet been set for the number of Chinese visitors Aberdeen hopes to attract, Mr Harris said that even getting a “tiny percentage” of the country’s travelling public would be an enormous coup for a city of its size.

“We’re on the verge of this phenomenal growth of Chinese tourism, and therefore as far as Scotland’s concerned we want to be as near the front of the pack as we possibly can be,” he said. “Getting started now just made sense to us.”