THE RETURN OF CHINESE TOURISM
At the start of 2023, China began lifting all travel restrictions, both domestic and international. Although Chinese tourism initially seemed hesitant to restart, Chinese people showed a strong desire to travel the world again. This was especially clear during the Chinese New Year holidays, when demand for travel abroad began to grow again and around 308 million trips were recorded, worth a total of 376 billion RMB. Encouraging figures, similar to pre-pandemic 2019 levels. In 2019, in fact, China represented the largest share of the global tourism market, and tourism was a source of income not only domestically but internationally too.
The favourite destinations of Chinese tourists recently have been Australia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia and Japan. These countries also suffered from the halt in Chinese travel, but now that the various restrictions have been lifted they are hoping for the return of Chinese tourists. Chinese tourism to Europe, on the other hand, is slightly down compared with previous standards, mainly because after COVID air fares to European destinations rose sharply and getting passports and visas is still a considerable problem. So for now many tourists prefer destinations that are easier to reach and are postponing more demanding trips.
Although Chinese travel to the West is recovering slowly, domestic tourism is booming. The COVID shutdown led the sector to offer the public ever more engaging and original experiences in more sophisticated, exclusive places such as stunning beach or ski resorts. Alongside this search for sophistication, there is also a growing demand for increasingly digital experiences. From these new trends we can outline two types of Chinese tourist to consider in contemporary tourism: experience-oriented and super-digital.
The first type includes all those tourists who seek experiences that make the destinations they visit unique; at the top of the list are sports and outdoor activities, which boomed with the Winter Olympics, followed by historical, cultural and culinary activities. The second type of traveller aims above all to experience the destination in a “digital version”. More and more tourist attractions offer experiences combined with virtual reality to make visits more appealing.
Social media has become a must for tour operators who want to market themselves, and short videos have become the best communication channel for Chinese tourists of all ages. Even one of China’s largest travel platforms, Trip.com, has adapted to this new trend, adding livestreaming to its social channels, which has been very successful with consumers. Creating the right travel package means respecting and meeting the customer’s various requests to build accessible, satisfying offers for Chinese travellers, in a comfortable and familiar setting that is nonetheless authentic and exciting.
Tourism service providers should expect to deal with travellers with diverse interests who are willing to spend money on travel, are looking for exciting experiences and choose high-quality products and services. Today’s Chinese traveller is digitally savvy and prefers functionality to branding: trends suggest that providers able to create authentic, exciting offers could be well placed to win this market.
