Some 120 million Chinese traveled overseas in 2015, up from 117 million in 2014, the year when the milestone of 100 million was first passed. This year's report shows two-thirds of outbound Chinese travelers consider travel to be an essential part of life and are prepared to spend nearly a quarter of their income on travel.
DALLAS – The fifth annual Chinese International Travel Monitor released by Hotels.com, has revealed ninety-two percent of Chinese travelers plan to increase or maintain spending and one-third of them plan to spend more on travel in the coming year – despite the slowing economy.
China continues to be the top global spender in terms of tourism expenditure, and the potential for growth with the market is enormous with only 5 percent of the nearly 1.4 billion Chinese citizens currently holding passports1.
Some 120 million Chinese traveled overseas in 2015, up from 117 million in 2014, the year when the milestone of 100 million was first passed. This year’s report shows two-thirds of outbound Chinese travelers consider travel to be an essential part of life – and are prepared to spend nearly a quarter of their income on travel, providing operators with enormous growth opportunity.
According to the hotelier survey, the top changes to Chinese travelers were improved English, travelers increasingly looking for value for money, higher expectations, more demanding requirements and spending less. Fifty one percent of hoteliers in the U.S. experienced an increase of Chinese guests traveling for leisure.
Top 5 Common Requests from Chinese guests to U.S. hoteliers:
– Free Wi-Fi – 75%
– Smoking room – 20%
– Chinese tea – 17%
– Kettle – 16%
– Translated tourism/travel guides – 13%
Hoteliers considered tourism marketing campaigns, emerging technology like mobile booking and exchange rates as the top three travel trends to have the biggest impact on the U.S. hotel business within the next few years.
Chinese millennials spent 27 percent of their income on travel, according to survey data – the highest proportion of all Chinese travelers. The hoteliers’ survey shows that the number of Chinese millennial guests (aged under 35) increased 36 percent in the U.S.
In 2015, Chinese travelers paid the most visiting these U.S. cities – Honolulu, New York, Boston, San Francisco, Miami and Seattle. Internationally they paid the most in London, Dubai, Milan and Milan.
According to the Hotels.com China website, most popular cities for Chinese travelers included New York, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. The Grand Canyon tops the list of landmarks to visit in a lifetime along with The Pyramids of Giza in Egypt and Mount Fuji in Japan.
The survey used Ipsos, a world leader in market research, which in May 2016 surveyed 3,000 Chinese travelers. To complement this data with opinions of hoteliers, Hotels.com carried out a global survey of 5,800 accommodation partners.
Angelos is the news editor for TravelDailyNews Media Network (traveldailynews.gr, traveldailynews.com and traveldailynews.asia). His role includes to monitor the hundrends of news sources of TravelDailyNews Media Network and skim the most important according to our strategy. He currently studies Communication, Media & Culture in Panteion University of Political & Social Studies of Athens.