The Wall Street Journal posted on July 23 that a growing number of Chinese tourists were giving up group and shopping trips but turning to independent travel in order to enhance the quality of their travel experience. This, as they said, leads directly to the decline of Chinese tourists’ overseas expenditure on luxury products.
CHINA – It is reported that more and more Chinese tourists are starting to get rid of bus tours and crazy shopping trips. Instead, they tend to invest more in other areas so as to enhance the overall travel experience. Statistics from Boston Consulting Group shows that, although tour groups remain to be the largest consumption resource currently, the overseas expenditure of independent tourists will exceed that of group tourists by the year 2020.
“Quite a few brands think that they are playing well with Chinese tourists” said Manelik Sfez, Marketing director of Global Blue, “in fact, it is just a relationship with those tour guides.” However, the report also admitted that the Chinese people remained to be a strong global force with high potential in the tourism industry. While the problem could be, although individual travellers will not completely abandon purchasing luxury products, it raises the difficulty for luxury brands to aim at those groups of customers.
The scope of individual tourists is still smaller compared to group travellers at the moment. However, the increasing rate of the former is reported to be larger than that of the latter. Pinault Printemps-Redoute (PPR) has been trying hard to enhance its Chinese customers’ loyalty. For example, about a year ago, the company included Chinese-speaking customers into its “Mystery Shoppers Survey” project. ”We must know how to access to the Chinese individual travel market as well as what we should do to meet their expectations” indicated one of PPR store managers, Pierre Pelarrey.
