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China Focus: Behind Chinese companies' fervor for overseas trips

Xinhua, May 12, 2015 Adjust font size:

Team work was given a new twist last week, when the employees of a Chinese company made the word's longest sentence -- with their bodies -- and smashed the previous record.

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Tiens Group, CEO Li Jinyuan last week treated more than 6,500 of his employees to a holiday in Nice, in the south of France.

During the holiday, which reportedly cost 13 million euros, 6,262 of Li's employees spelt the phrase "Tiens's dream is Nice in the Cote d'Azure".

The spectacle even caught the attention of the French government.

While the new Guinness World Record gave the Tianjin-based Tiens a lot of media exposure, it also began discussions on overseas holidays by Chinese companies.

Trips similar to Tiens' seem to have become a more regular occurrence in recent years, with personal care product company Nu Skin (Greater China) last year taking more than 6,000 of its employees on a holiday to America.

According to an article by Tencent, 18 companies had arranged similar holidays by the end of August 2013.

An industry insider said all of these enterprises have one thing in common: They engage in direct marketing.

"Luxurious tours are an important part of an employee motivational strategy," said a salesperson who declined to be named.

The source said that sales teams often face rejection when dealing with customers.

"What better way to encourage perseverance than by organizing a fancy overseas holiday?" he said.

The Tencent article said that of China's top ten direct marketing companies in 2012, eight organized large-scale tours overseas.

Extravagant foreign tours also help to promote brands, said Liu Gang, an expert from Nankai University in Tianjin.

"A tour like Tiens' not only helps consolidate its image overseas, but also exposes the foreign market to its products," Liu said.

The Tiens event is a hot topic on microblog Sina Weibo, with many users saying they were shocked.

"It's so weird, I thought it was for a state visit or something," read a comment by Weibo user "Mojinxiaowei1971".

Another user,"Jiuguanjin", chastised the company and accused it of "probably swindling money from China and spending it overseas".

Liu Gang said as long as such companies operated legally, their sumptuous tours should not be criticized. Endi