What are the trends & developments in Chinese outbound travel?

China’s economy is growing rapidly and therefor people’s personal income is increasing together with the tourism industry of the country with an astonishing development in recent years. The massive outbound market has strained the attention of western countries. However the inbound market is popular amongst Chinese people, it is now in a downturn.

The great improvement in Chinese people’s living standards and consumption level made the outbound visitors grows by leap and bounds. Nowadays Chinese people are keen to go abroad to explore other parts of the world, which creates a remarkable market for foreign countries. The most popular destinations for Chinese people are South Korea, Japan, Thailand, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, USA, Singapore and Maldives. Based on the huge population, a further and continuous growth of outbound visitors is predicted.

The outbound tourists reached 59.03 million in the first half of 2016, which witnessed an increase of 4.3% over the same period of 2015. China has become the top tourist source country of many countries such as Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Maldives, Russia, and United Kingdom. (Travel China Guide, 2016)

The popular destinations are mainly located in Asian countries. The reason is that the journey is short and it won’t cost too much. Also short distance trips needs shorter time and do not require a long holiday. Finally Chinese people avoid going on holiday to Europe because of the recent terrorist attacks.

Chinese people loves making photo’s when traveling, go shopping expensive brands and sleeping in cars, but recently Chinese tourist prefer entertaining themselves. For example; they spend more time on discovering the cities or eating different kind of foods. They were more willing to experience the daily life of the locals and know more about local customs and cultures.

In the first half of 2016, female was the main force in outbound tourism. They accounted for about 58%, up to 34.394 million. The other 42% are male, about 24.7926 million. Among all tourists, 80’s and 90’s played an important role in outbound tourism. 24% of outbound tourists, 14.1672 million, aged between 30 and 39 years old; and 20% of them, 11.806 million, aged between 20 and 29 years old. (Travel China Guide, 2016)