The National Tourism Day was held for the third time since its inauguration in 2011. The date, May 19, was chosen to commemorate the first travel diary entry of China’s most famous traveler, Xu Xiake, exactly 400 years ago in 1613.
While May 19, 2013 marked Pentecost Sunday across many Western countries, China instead celebrated National Tourism Day. This year the country delighted in the fact that China has become the biggest domestic tourism market in the world with almost three billion travels last year. It is now also the number one international tourism source market with more than 83 million border crossings in 2012. Despite these statistics the number of visitors coming to China continues to decline.
The National Tourism Day was held for the third time since its inauguration in 2011. The date, May 19, was chosen to commemorate the first travel diary entry of China’s most famous traveler, Xu Xiake, exactly 400 years ago in 1613.
Xu lived during the Ming Dynasty era, a period which saw Chinese fleets, under the admiral Zheng He, travelling all the way to East Africa, the Portuguese establishing a settlement in Macau and the Jesuits working at the Imperial court in Beijing.
Outbound travelers from China have followed Admiral Zheng in increasing numbers with more than 30 million out of the 83 million total visits going to countries beyond the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau. Foreign traders and experts are flocking to China as the nation is still seen as very useful if not necessarily trustworthy.
The number of leisure tourists to China however is heavily decreasing, resulting in an overall negative surplus of minus 3% for 2012. As Chinese tourists spent more than US$102 billion for international travel last year, the balance of international tourism expenses and income from international visitors to China showed a staggering deficit of US$68 billion in 2012.
There are a multitude of reasons for the downturn of visitor numbers traveling to China for leisure purposes. Images of polluted cities and poisoned water and food, crowded museums and parks overflowing with domestic tourists, comparatively high living expenses against surrounding nations and negative word-of-mouth from peers who went to China looking for water buffalos and bicycles and found only highways and high rise buildings, has all contributed negatively to visitor numbers.
A majority of affluent people in the world have been to China to see the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, but bringing them back as repeat leisure visitors takes additional efforts. China is indeed “beautiful” as a new official tourism slogan claims, but to uncover China’s off the beaten track beauty is still not easy.
That in 2013 the National Tourism Day was celebrated for only the third time in China’s history illustrates that only recently has the Chinese government started to fully acknowledge the importance of all forms of tourism. Later this year a tourism law will come into being for the first time and official papers such as the “Outline for National Tourism and Leisure 2013-2020” have also been published. The Chinese president and party secretary Xi Jinping even mentioned outbound tourism in a positive way at a recent international conference.
Xu Xiake, wandering the land by himself 400 years ago, would certainly be surprised by the Chinese crowds encountered everywhere and the tales of visits to faraway places told. The staggering numbers of Chinese enjoying themselves in the Forbidden City, honeymooning in the Maldives and shopping in Paris might create the impression that the carrying capacity has already been reached, but in fact China tourism has only just started.
COTRI China Outbound Tourism Research Institute is the world’s leading independent research institute for information, training, quality assessment, research, and consulting relating to the Chinese outbound tourism market.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
