Many countries and many sectors of the tourism industry have suffered in the last decade, but China and its outbound tourism can look back to a period of unprecedented growth. "A decade from hell” TIME magazine called the years from 2000 to 2009 in a recent cover story. This may be true for the USA and – thinking of Copenhagen – in environmental terms also for the whole planet…
Many countries and many sectors of the tourism industry have suffered in the last decade, but China and its outbound tourism can look back to a period of unprecedented growth.
“A decade from hell” TIME magazine called the years from 2000 to 2009 in a recent cover story. This may be true for the USA and – thinking of Copenhagen – in environmental terms also for the whole planet.
For China’s Outbound tourism this decade certainly will be remembered rather as the time of strong (think 10 to 50 million border crossings per year), chaotic (think Zero-Dollar tours) and rather unsophisticated (think 10 countries in 12 days trips) growth. If the starting point for China’s outbound tourism development is the VFR visits to Hong Kong in 1983, it could also be called the decade of adolescence, moving through the big changes from being 17 years old to being 26 years old.
At the end of 2009, Canada has been included as the last missing important destination into the group of ADS countries, a system of “Approved Destination Status” which, COTRI dares to predict, will not survive the coming decade. Even today the idea that a destination needs to be “approved” sounds already rather old-fashioned.
More importantly, the State Council just weeks before the end of the decade pledged to promote the Chinese tourism industry and build it into a strategic pillar industry in the economy of the country. Premier Wen Jiabao called for improved service and management, better tourism infrastructure and enhanced training in the Chinese tourism industry. This will also have a positive effect on the Chinese outbound sector, where at the beginning of 2010 we find a tourism industry which is lagging behind its own customers in sophistication, knowledge and special interests with regard to overseas destinations.
COTRI has been following and within its possibilities even pushing a bit the development of China’s outbound tourism since 2004 in an organized form after its humble director distributed already in 1999 a press release stating “The Chinese tourists are coming!“
COTRI has been growing and has been able to establish in 2009 a number of cooperations and partnerships with UNWTO, PATA and several public and private tourism organisations, which will enable COTRI to further improve the quality and widen the scope of the quest to support the positive development of China’s outbound tourism for the benefit of the travellers and the tourism industry inside and outside of China.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
