Outbound tourism in China (For overseas vendors willing to attract Chinese visitors)

Globalization has revolutionized the tourism industry, escalating a large number of people visiting foreign countries. China is a country which spends the most on trips made abroad and thus captures the attention of overseas vendors, giving it the title of the most lucrative outbound tourist country.

Outbound tourism – on the boom
The thriving outbound tourism of China has placed it on the top spot among the top 5 biggest spenders on tourism. According to the UN World Tourism Ranking of 2017, the Chinese spent $289.4 billion while the USA spent $151.4 billion in the same year. This shows the promising potential of the Chinese outbound market that has attracted overseas vendors from numerous destinations. This is because local tourists have a strong spending power which resultantly attracts relevant businesses worldwide and thus the china’s demand heightens increasingly on the world forum.

According to the China National Tourism Administration Statistics, the Chinese tourists traveled overseas on 131 million occasions in 2017, an increase of 7.0% from the previous year. These figures depict the keen interest of Chinese in exploring the world at large, their significant spending power and their prosperity to shop.

Expected to grow even further
And this is not just it, the number of outbound tourists is expected to rise to a whopping 200 million by 2020. The number of outbound trips when compared to the inbound flights, accounted for over 4 billion visits in 2017. According to the McKinsey report, by 2020 those domestic travelers will turn to overseas trips and the outbound trips will grow largely.

Overseas trips are made by only 8.7% of the Chinese population (120 million), this is the number of people holding a passport.

Outbound tourism contributing to outward investment
China, with its tremendous power, has been increasing its outward direct investment and has now exceeded $100 billion marks. So far the Chinese investors have invested in more than 25000 companies in 196 countries. And all this goes hand in hand with the outbound travel and tourism industry.

Crux
While outbound tourism is on the rise in China, it is further expected to blow past the previous years in 2019. The main reasons being economic strength, relaxed policies and spending power, that have enabled the Chinese tourism market to boom and flourished tremendously.