The Chinese style of welcome includes hanging a huge banner up with a gigantic ‘welcome’ written on it. Nothing makes Chinese guests feel more welcome than saying ‘huan ying’ ( hwan ying) to them and making sure they hear it at the hotel lobby, on the bus and in the restaurant. But don’t stop just there! Great tourism staff will always provide consistently great service throughout a guest’s stay. So you’ve greeted your guests and won their hearts. When to use: every time you meet your guestsīody language: big smile, welcoming gestureĮxpected response: ‘nihao’s back and giggles

Immediately you’ve become their favourite Aussie. For example, ‘ni hao, wo jiao David’, with a big smile on your face. If you want to go a step further, which is always appreciated, introduce yourself by saying ‘wo jiao’ ( war jow) which means ‘my name is’. If you are welcoming a group of visitors, say ‘ni men hao’ ( nee men how) which is hello to multiple people. It means “hello” (literally “you good”) so you know when / where to use it! Make sure you say it with a smile and you will most often get a smile back from your Chinese guest. You say it as ‘ nee hao’ and you often see it spelt ‘nihao’. In italics and/or brackets, we’ve included some pronunciation helpers. Here are 5 of the most useful phrases for you to know. If you work for a hotel or in tourism in Australia, learning a few phrases of Mandarin Chinese will not only help you serve your guests better, it will also ensure you stand out amongst your colleagues. These days they might even have Japanese and Korean language services.

Major Chinese and Taiwanese hotels almost always have English-speaking staff to assist travellers from Western countries. This is more than double the amount from five years ago.

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that the number of Chinese visitors to Australia rose 20.1% to 1.18 million in the 12 months ending October 31. Lucy kindly accepted my offer to write a post to help tourism operators learn some basic Mandarin – I hope you find it useful!Ĭhina is no doubt Australia’s key tourism income source. Note from Justin: In this post I’m very excited to introduce Lucy Lu, a Melbourne-based Chinese teacher.

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