With the rapid growth of China’s economy and further increase of Chinese people’s personal income, China has become the world second largest tourism market after the USA.
In 2014 Chinese Lunar New Year Holiday, Chinese tourists spent USD 6.9 billion. Chinese tourists pose a significant impact on for tourist destinations.
Chinese High-end traveler are the trend setter, they contributed 100 million trips in 2015,
Despite shopping, which is still the most expenditure, more and more Chinese tourist are looking for experience, which make the tourism consumption more dynamic. Worth to note that the travelers are very independent now, there is an increase number on these travellers staying in air B&B, renting cars to enjoy self-driving holidays.
In this article we will explore top 5 big trends of Chinese luxury travel.
- Outbound travel increased
Based on Huff post latest report, in 2015, Chinese millionaire spend average 20 days a year on travel, with average 4 outbound trips per year. Outbound travel in China overall has increased 17.8%, exceed 116 million in 2015.
- Top 15 outbound travel destination
| Outbound destination | Portion | |
| 1 – | Australia | 26.5% |
| 2 – | France | 25.7% |
| 3 ↑ | Maldives | 22.1% |
| 4 ↓ | Dubai | 15.2% |
| 5 ↓ | Switzerland | 14.9% |
| 6 ↑ | Italy | 13.3% |
| 7 ↓ | America | 11.0% |
| 8 ↑ | United Kingdom | 9.4% |
| 9 ↓ | Japan | 9.1% |
| 10 – | New Zealand | 8.0% |
| 11 ↑ | Hawaii | 6.1% |
| 12 – | Thailand | 5.3% |
| 13 ↑ | Canada | 4.7% |
| 14 ↓ | Singapore | 4.5% |
| 15 ↓ | Germany | 3.1% |
UK is listed on the 8th place among top destination. Average spending for trip to the UK is $12,900, besides leisure activites. Shopping takes 29% of the overall spend. It worth to mention, 24% of these super traveler are travelling to the UK for food and cuisine, it’s higher than traveling to France. Its probably because UK has different cuisine from all over the world.
- When is the travel high season?
Summer holidays are the top pick, then its October national holiday and Chinese New Year. However, most of them – 56% of the overall travelers choose random time during the year, which means more than half of the trips are not limited to certain time.
- Social media impact on travel increased
Wechat oversees email, became the top 1 influencer, over 58% of the interviewees chose Wechat. The second one is email (38%).
| Mobile Function | Percentage | Travel APP | Percentage | ||
| 1 | 58% | 1 | Ctrip | 49% | |
| 2 | 38% | 2 | Qunar | 15% | |
| 3 | Photo | 32% | 3 | Elong | 7% |
| 4 | Text Message | 21% | 4 | Tuniu | 5% |
| 5 | Music | 18% | 5 | Tongcheng | 3% |
| 5 | Web browser | 18% | 5 | Ali travel | 3% |
| 7 | Video | 13% | 7 | Lv mama | 2% |
| 8 | Shopping | 10% | 8 | Daodao | 1% |
| 8 | Game | 10% | 8 | Others | 1% |
| 8 | 10% | – | Non | 6% |
- Ctrip dominate nearly half of travel app market share
95% of people download travel apps, and more than half downloaded Ctrip, then Qunar. Small luxury agencies grew a lot in the past 3-5 years, many of them did not exist in the market back to few years ago.
Takeaway:
Luxury travel become a hot tropic, top destinations are Europe, New Zealand and Australia.
- Duty free shop become a major shopping channel
- Chinese spend more on luxury oversea than in mainland China
- Instead of pure shopping, shopping oversea with culture experience and local experience, beautiful scenery are preferred
