A Chinese actress and influencer promotes the Somme department, a strategy to attract tourists to Picardy

Amiens, Mers-les-Bains, Saint-Valery-sur-Somme… All these emblematic places of the Somme appear in an advertising spot promoting the department. Featured, Jelly Lin, a Chinese actress who has 12 million subscribers on social networks. The choice is not trivial since the Chinese are visiting the region more and more.

A video filmed in the Somme has exceeded 40 million views on social networks. We see Jelly Lin, a famous Chinese actress who has half a million subscribers on Instagram… and 11.5 million on Weibo, the Chinese social network.

The actress and influencer walks through emblematic places in the department: the Amiens cathedral and the Saint-Leu district, Mers-les-Bains, Saint-Valery-sur-Somme… An advertising spot that looks like a campaign fashion house which seems to have seduced more than one.

Why did you use an influencer and actress? To this question, Paul-Eric Dècle, president of the Amiens Métropole Tourist and Convention Office, argues that influencers, thanks to the videos they post on social networks, make it possible to bring in tourists in the medium term. , depending on their nationality. “It is a global strategy that we are adopting with the aim of increasing the notoriety of the territory of Amiens, the Somme and the Hauts-de-France region, and thus its attractiveness, and increasing the foreign tourist clientele.“, he explains.

Their choice is not trivial. The Somme already welcomes many Australian tourists.on a historical level“The Japanese clientele is increasingly important, especially since the Olympic Games. As for the Chinese, “This is a clientele that traditionally comes to our territory“, explains Paul-Eric Dècle. Their attendance has decreased since the Covid-19 health crisis, “so with Hauts-de-France tourism, we are doing everything in our power to ensure that pre-Covid attendance returns in the medium term“.

However, the tourist office does not have precise figures on the number of Chinese tourists, because for that, each of them would have to come and register or take guided tours, which is not always possible. case. “But we can count on several thousand Chinese tourists coming to the Hauts-de-France region and in particular to Amiens, in the Somme.“, every year.

The department and the region are trying to have a “multifactor strategy“to attract tourists. This consists on the one hand of working with influencers like Jelly Lin, who have tens of millions of subscribers,”and therefore who make videos which are very attractive and which allow us to have a younger Chinese clientele“On the other hand, they also remain on a strategy.”more classic“ of “paper communication, on magazines, particularly international, which would make it possible to bring back Chinese customers on an individual level, but also group customers“.

If we see Jelly Lin strolling through several emblematic and historic places in Amiens, it's no coincidence. Paul-Eric Dècle notes that many Chinese tourists are fond of the medieval history of France: “so they pass by the cathedral, but also by the belfry“, For example.

However, it remains difficult to make correlation links between influencer videos and attendance at a place, but the tourist office expects to see an increase in customers in the coming weeks, and at the start of 2025. Chinese. “If this is something that we observe, then we will undoubtedly be able to correlate it with the Jelly Lin video and more generally the strategy that is being implemented in the Hauts-de-France region in partnership with the metropolis of Amiens“, underlines Paul-Eric Dècle.

Isabelle Heulin, manager of a restaurant in Amiens which appears in the commercial, is happy to have been selected to host part of the filming. She works regularly with the tourist office. “I think they knew that I had an establishment that would allow it, it's true that visually, it's very pretty, there is a beautiful terrace, a beautiful exposure with a view of the cathedral“.

She is used to welcoming many foreign clients. At the moment, the number of Asian tourists is not the greatest among her clientele, but she observes that there are more, especially since she has worked in the restaurant for eight years. She observes that “the Chinese are very fond of, they travel a lot, love gastronomy, discovering specialties“. If she doesn't know what to expect, she hopes “whole-heartedly“that the repercussions will be positive.

With Elsa Teiton / FTV