Nowadays, outbound travel has become commonplace in China. The world tourism market is witnessing a rapid increase of Chinese tourists.
Around the world, major tourist destinations have seen surging numbers of Chinese visitors in recent years. In 2010 alone, 57.39 million Chinese traveled abroad, spending US$48 billion overseas, according to the China Tourism Academy (CTA).
The total number of outbound tourists from China is expected to reach 100 million by 2020 by the World Tourism Organization.
Chinese visitors have been spreading to every corner of the world, with their generous consumption in the destination countries.
China has emerged as the second largest source market after India for Nepal. Annual tourist arrivals from China exceed 46,000 in 2010, a fivefold jump from 2001. The number of Chinese tourists has already reached
33,375 by the first seven months of 2011, according to eKantipur.com report.
Thailand, a popular destination for Chinese tourists all the time, will see China as the biggest source of foreign tourists in two to three years, the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) says. At present, the number of tourists from China ranks third in Thailand, after those from Malaysia and Japan, Xinhua reported.
The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) says China will become the biggest source of foreign tourists in Thailand in two to three years.
Vietnam welcomed more than 3.42 million foreign visitors in the first seven months, up 17.3 percent year-onyear, according to the Vietnam General Statistics Office (GSO). Of the figure, visitors from China continued to top the list with an increase of 53.5 percent.
Chinese visitors to Fiji are keeping increasing with a 50 percent increase in April alone, according to Fiji’s Minister for Tourism Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum.
In Africa, the number of Chinese tourists is also on the rise. “The forecast for the China outbound market is positive and I think this is a market that has been neglected for a long time. Many agents and tourism organizations are now beginning to see the potential and hence paying attention to the market,” George Mbugua, director of Mitoni Africa Safaris Limited based in Kenya, told China’s Foreign Trade.
“China, within the next 2 years, will be the leading source of tourists to East Africa,” he added.
In Europe, France is among the favorite destinations for Chinese tourists. It is reported that last year, the official figure of Chinese tourists in France reached 550,000.
The U.S. is another important destination for Chinese tourists. The country saw the biggest increase of visitors from China in 2010 with 810,738 travelers, up 53 percent year on year,
according to U.S. customs authorities.
To attract Chinese visitors, the destination countries have been sparing no effort to improve the tourism market and simply the tourism process.
“We have employed Chinese speaking guides for the ease in handling such groups,” Allan Ochieng, operations manager with Mitoni
Africa Safaris Limited, told our reporter.
Most of the company’s materials, including brochures, are all translated into Chinese. It is currently undertaking a major project of building its entire website in Chinese and hosting this in China so that its end clients can have the ease in obtaining information for East Africa. It also has designed friendly itineraries for vacations and packaged the information in a CD as well as online for the convenience of agents intending to send tourists to Kenyan.
Moreover, “We have been in talks with Chinese Consulate in Beijing regarding issues that have been raised as concerns obtaining the Kenyan Visa and are able to assist travelers towards obtaining general information on Visa, security in Kenya, best times for travel to this region,” said Allan Ochieng.
New Zealand tourism chiefs said recently they are expecting the number of Chinese visitors to the country to rise after “improvements” to the visa application process.
“The initiatives such as the recent improvements Immigration New Zealand has made to the Chi- nese travel visa application process, should help boost the number of Chinese visitors even further in future,” Kevin Bowler, tourism New Zealand chief executive, was quoted as saying by Xinhua.
Canada’s tourism industry is seeking to attract more Chinese tourists by providing quality products, Greg Klassen, senior vice president for Marketing Strategy and Communications at the Canadian Tourism Commission (CTC), was cited as saying by Xinhua.
Earlier this year, Canada has launched a “Say Hello to Canada” campaign to introduce Canada to Chinese. CTC Figures showed that trips to Canada by Chinese travelers increased by 21.3 percent in 2010.
With the increasing Chinese travelers, the outbound tourism is undergoing changes and transformation.
According to the CEO Xulin and the director Zhong Dandan of the Beijing-based VariArts Travel Group, the changes are as following:
First, the middle and high-end tourism is growing rapidly.
Second, the tourism products have become diversified with the market segmentation. Most domestic travel agencies, once relying on their own team, focus on B2C (Business to Customer) with their single industry chain. While, at present, more and more agencies are putting focus on B2B (Business to Business). Furthermore, the destinations also become diversified with more and more countries signing the Approved Destination Status (ADS) Agreement with China.
Consumer demand is also diversified. The travel agencies have carried out a wide range of thematic tourism, such as adventure tourism, culture tourism, business tourism, golf tourism, ski tourism, etc., in order to meet various demands of different consumers.
Third, the ever popular junket tour is shifting to private tailored tourism and that leads to the rapid growth of outbound tourism.
Fourth, visitors are yearning for in-depth tourism, thus requesting better tourism service and quality. Nowadays, they are pursing for fine service and quality rather than the number of the scenic spots.
“We have just launched our ‘Slow travel’ program to meet the personal demand of customers. ‘Slow’, as a kind of deep pursuit for quality, means to stop to enjoy the beautiful sceneries,”said Xu, adding that “Only with the tourism pace slowed down can visitors pay more attention to quality and service.”
The Chinese tourists are being more and more mature. New types of travelers are appearing. In the past, they, running like in a military training, desired to see more places in a limited period of time. However, today they are beginning to slow down and stay longer in one place.