McArthurGlen celebrates Chinese New Year

In the run-up to Chinese New Year, McArthurGlen is turning up the volume of its marketing activities to luxury shopping travellers from China, an increasingly important market for the Group's 20 Designer Outlets across Europe.

With Chinese New Year falling on 19 February in 2015, McArthurGlen is launching a page on China's fast-growing WeChat app as well as relaunching its Sina Weibo page. Both WeChat and Sina Weibo are key social media channels for communicating with luxury-loving Chinese consumers, as well as with the country's retail and fashion influencers.

At the same time, together with the Group's brand partners, which include the most sought-after names in luxury and premium fashion, McArthurGlen is launching a series of Chinese New Year activities and promotions: these will take place from 7 February till 28 February at 14 of McArthurGlen's most popular Designer Outlets with Chinese tourists.

Centres launching the promotion are: all five McArthurGlen Designer Outlets in Italy - Serravalle (Milan), Noventa di Piave (Venice), Castel Romano (Rome), Barberino (Florence) and La Reggia (Naples); McArthurGlen Athens; Designer Outlet Roermond in Holland (near the German city of Düsseldorf); McArthurGlen's two German centres - Berlin and Neumünster (Hamburg); Designer Outlet Parndorf, near Vienna; Ashford (38 minutes from London by high-speed train) and Cheshire Oaks (Manchester).

The specially designed creative for the promotion gives a vibrant and modern twist to traditional Chinese characters, symbolising the festive message and welcoming in the Year of the Ram. The campaign is starting 12 days before New Year in order to capture Chinese customers looking to buy gifts for friends and family to welcome in the New Year.

By subscribing to McArthurGlen's WeChat page, or by following the Sina Weibo page or showing a McArthurGlen e-voucher by visiting www.mcarthurglen.com/CNY, Chinese shoppers will receive a Chinese New Year envelope when they visit the participating centres' Welcome Desks.

The envelope will contain a McArthurGlen Fashion Passport, with an extra saving of 10%, and additional retail offers from participating brands: the more shoppers spend, the more offers they receive, including a limited-edition, Year of the Ram tote bag.

For its campaigns on WeChat and Weibo, McArthurGlen will be partnering with the national tourism boards of Austria, Britain, Germany, Holland and Italy. The Group will also launch the promotion by running paid activity on China's search engine Baidu, advertising in China's travel trade media and working with key online influencers.

The campaign will also target Chinese living and working in Europe through Facebook and locally edited Chinese-language media.

Later this year, McArthurGlen will launch a dedicated campaign for the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival and Korea's Thanksgiving. This will be directed towards travellers from China, Singapore and Malaysia as well as South Korea.

Sales to Chinese travellers soared by more than 35% last year at McArthurGlen's 20 Designer Outlets, having more than quadrupled over the past four years.