Take 1.4bn people and a booming middle class with money to spend. Mix a sightseeing and shopping culture with an emerging interest in landscape, natural experiences and foreign food. Add better airports and transport infrastructure. Finally, season lightly with a relaxation in travel restrictions to create a mouth-watering solution for many countries’ sluggish tourism industries. As written in an Australian tourist company blog “put another 6000 snags and shrimp on the barbie!” But what kind of holiday do the Chinese want? Run of the mill shopping and sightseeing tours, or something, well, more individual?
The Chinese recently overtook the Americans as the world’s biggest spending tourists, with more than 100million people splashing out to the tune of $165bn In the five years to 2015 the number of total trips taken has more than doubled. The World Travel and Tourism Council expects the sector in China to have expanded by 9% a year between 2010 and 2020, the fastest rate in the world. Globally, China is revving up at the take off position of the Tourism Life Cycle.
Hong Kong and Macau remain the biggest holiday destinations for Chinese tourists, but Europe is popular among an affluent minority. Whilst group travel sightseeing coach tours along the lines of “see five countries in ten days” remain the mainstay, activities such as hot spring spa visits and wining and dining have all increased in popularity (Travelzoo 2014). The new wave of younger, well educated tourists, often working for international companies, are, according to Wolfgang Georg Arlt, director of the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute: “less interested in ticking off a list of famous places and more interested in doing things, such as learning local dances, taking cookery classes or going punting in Cambridge” Thomas Cook, a UK based travel company, has launched a joint venture with the business conglomerate Fosun, (launched by four Shanghai university graduates in 1992), which now owns a 5% stake. Thomas Cook hope the deal will allow it to develop upmarket hotels in China that will be exclusive to their customers. This year Fosun also bought the struggling French travel company Club Med and hope to develop the classic ‘beach and activity holiday’ brand for the Chinese market closer to home than the Maldives. Its first ski resort opened in Yabuli, near Harbin in 2010. It hopes as many as 12 million Chinese could be tempted to try its new range of family oriented beach and ski resorts.
The western vogue for independent travel booked online is unpopular in China. Group travel will dominate for the medium term because it is easier to obtain travel documents in the highly centralised and regulated travel business. For both the domestic and foreign tourist, The Great Wall, Terracotta Army of Xi’an, the Bund of Shanghai, the Disneyeaque Lijiang in Yunnan, are of course amongst the top sites, but there is change in the air and a new kind of visitor can be seen lurking. For example in Guangxi, near Yangshou on the Li River, is a converted set of ancient farmhouse buildings of honey coloured bricks bought and lovingly renovated as a guest house by a Dutch couple and a small army of locals. Most visitors ‘do’ the obligatory bamboo rafting, but the “Giggling Tree” also offers nature hikes, bike tours and cookery courses. Curious bands of non- resident visitors wander through the courtyard restaurant clearly puzzled at the use of ancient farm paraphernalia – such as farmers’ capes and grinders - as decorative items. They are wondering why people are sitting in an old farmhouse. Retro-heritage chic is a concept in its infancy.
Clearly there are rich picking for foreign companies and online travel agents, but my guess, looking at the Trip Advisor statistics of my review of the Giggling Tree, with its 1267 hits and the majority of these from China, is that Chinese Heritage Tourism is the next big thing. Or even the truly individual Road Trip, Easy Rider style.
First Published in the Nanjinger, August 2015
The Chinese recently overtook the Americans as the world’s biggest spending tourists, with more than 100million people splashing out to the tune of $165bn In the five years to 2015 the number of total trips taken has more than doubled. The World Travel and Tourism Council expects the sector in China to have expanded by 9% a year between 2010 and 2020, the fastest rate in the world. Globally, China is revving up at the take off position of the Tourism Life Cycle.
Hong Kong and Macau remain the biggest holiday destinations for Chinese tourists, but Europe is popular among an affluent minority. Whilst group travel sightseeing coach tours along the lines of “see five countries in ten days” remain the mainstay, activities such as hot spring spa visits and wining and dining have all increased in popularity (Travelzoo 2014). The new wave of younger, well educated tourists, often working for international companies, are, according to Wolfgang Georg Arlt, director of the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute: “less interested in ticking off a list of famous places and more interested in doing things, such as learning local dances, taking cookery classes or going punting in Cambridge” Thomas Cook, a UK based travel company, has launched a joint venture with the business conglomerate Fosun, (launched by four Shanghai university graduates in 1992), which now owns a 5% stake. Thomas Cook hope the deal will allow it to develop upmarket hotels in China that will be exclusive to their customers. This year Fosun also bought the struggling French travel company Club Med and hope to develop the classic ‘beach and activity holiday’ brand for the Chinese market closer to home than the Maldives. Its first ski resort opened in Yabuli, near Harbin in 2010. It hopes as many as 12 million Chinese could be tempted to try its new range of family oriented beach and ski resorts.
The western vogue for independent travel booked online is unpopular in China. Group travel will dominate for the medium term because it is easier to obtain travel documents in the highly centralised and regulated travel business. For both the domestic and foreign tourist, The Great Wall, Terracotta Army of Xi’an, the Bund of Shanghai, the Disneyeaque Lijiang in Yunnan, are of course amongst the top sites, but there is change in the air and a new kind of visitor can be seen lurking. For example in Guangxi, near Yangshou on the Li River, is a converted set of ancient farmhouse buildings of honey coloured bricks bought and lovingly renovated as a guest house by a Dutch couple and a small army of locals. Most visitors ‘do’ the obligatory bamboo rafting, but the “Giggling Tree” also offers nature hikes, bike tours and cookery courses. Curious bands of non- resident visitors wander through the courtyard restaurant clearly puzzled at the use of ancient farm paraphernalia – such as farmers’ capes and grinders - as decorative items. They are wondering why people are sitting in an old farmhouse. Retro-heritage chic is a concept in its infancy.
Clearly there are rich picking for foreign companies and online travel agents, but my guess, looking at the Trip Advisor statistics of my review of the Giggling Tree, with its 1267 hits and the majority of these from China, is that Chinese Heritage Tourism is the next big thing. Or even the truly individual Road Trip, Easy Rider style.
First Published in the Nanjinger, August 2015