More Chinese tourists visiting Europe than ever before

 

File photo

 

More Chinese tourists are visiting Europe than ever before, while at the same time helping to fuel growth in arrivals across the Asia Pacific, according to a new report.

 

This week, leading industry figures met at the Global Tourism Economy Forum in Macau, with this year’s focus on Chinese tourism and the European Union.

 

The hosting of the event coincided with the release of the Asia Tourism Trends – 2018 report, carried out jointly by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), and the Global Tourism Economy Research Centre (GTERC).

 

The report revealed that in 2016, 5.7 million Chinese tourists visited Europe, 3.5 million of which visited the EU.

 

Destinations which recorded the highest number of Chinese tourists were Italy, France, Germany and Spain.

 

France, UK, Germany and Italy, were the most popular destinations by first port of call, followed by Central and Eastern European countries such as Croatia, Slovakia and Bulgaria.

 

The report also revealed that Chinese tourists are now seeking out non-traditional secondary destinations that have strong cultural appeal.

 

Destinations such as the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Croatia have all seen significant increases in the number of Chinese arrivals.

 

The Czech Republic, for example welcomed more than half a million Chinese tourists in 2017, six times more than in 2010, while 13 times more Chinese visited Croatia in 2017 than in 2010.

 

More than half of the Chinese tourists visiting Europe for tourism were aged between 30-49 and female.

 

Globally, the report found that Asia-Pacific is outperforming all other regions in growth of international tourist arrivals.

 

In 2017, 323 million tourists visited the region, a growth of 6 percent on the previous year.

 

While Asia-Pacific remains the second most visited behind Europe, it is the fastest growing in terms of tourist arrivals.

 

Rapid economic growth, rising air connectivity, travel facilitation and large infrastructure projects were credited with boosting international travel in the region.
 

Asia Pacific earned the equivalent of USD390 billion in tourism receipts in 2017, of which Thailand was the top tourism earner (USD 57 billion).

 

-- © Copyright Thai Visa News 2018-10-26

Chinese are getting richer, Europe is getting cheaper [then Thailand for ex.]...so why bother to do any shopping in overprices malls in Bangkok ? Even Manilla, KL or Hong Kong seem to have cheaper outlets ..

Its a cycle - today is for chinese, tomorrow it will be different. 

Spent 2 months recently in Russia ( not Moscow) mainly Siberia area. Amazed at the plane loads of Chinese tourists everywhere.

20 hours ago, webfact said:

Globally, the report found that Asia-Pacific is outperforming all other regions in growth of international tourist arrivals

Just returned from a week in Hoi An, Vietnam, after attending a tourism function in Danang. The place is full of Chinese, western, Thai and Korean and Japanese tourists. There are busloads of them everywhere plus hordes of the usual western nomads. 

There are now four International standard golf courses in the 25 kilometres between Danang and Hoi An.

The tourism word is out that Thailand is steadily losing its most favoured golf status for golfers from China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan. Vietnam is now becoming the popular Asian destination for this sport.

2 hours ago, ZAKY said:

Its a cycle - today is for chinese, tomorrow it will be different. 

It's a cycle -- the upcoming two hundred years is for Chinese, the next two hundred years will be different.  Next cycle - Africa?

Give it a hundred years or less and US and EU 'economic migrants' will be crashing the borders of Eurasia trying to get in illegally in order to 'do the work Chinese won't do.'  <laughs>

It's possible we may have already seen peak Chinese tourism, at least in the short term.

 

It looks increasingly likely that China, primarily for demographic and hidden-debt reasons, may never escape the middle-income trap, which will impact on housing, the ordinary Chinese citizen's primary investment vehicle - and which will in turn affect consumption, including tourism.

 

Trump's trade war will not do anything to help either, and if you are of a conspiracy-theory bent of mind, you might think that deliberate. 

In every journey I travel, I meet Chinese people, they travel a lot and I envy them very much.