Latest Hotels.com Chinese International Travel Monitor highlights younger millennials and affluent travellers fuel 20 percent growth in Chinese outbound travellers.
80 percent of Chinese travellers have used an online device including mobiles, desktops and laptops to plan and book travel, compared with only 53 percent last year. Chinese-language booking websites serve as trusted link between Chinese travellers and accommodation providers Hoteliers called on to accommodate the needs of Chinese travellers with free WiFi and Chinese-speaking staff The continued, sustained growth in the number of Chinese international travellers present huge opportunities for the global tourism industry and hoteliers, reveals the Hotels.com Chinese International Travel Monitor 2015.
According to Hotels.com’s latest major annual study, tech-savvy, younger and more affluent Chinese form a substantial part of the 20 percent growth in outbound mainland Chinese travellers, reaching 107 million in 2014. The report also highlights the need for hoteliers to cater to Chinese travellers’ needs such as Chinese-speaking staff, Chineselanguage tourist guides and dedicated websites.
The fourth edition of the Hotels.com™ Chinese International Travel Monitor (CITM) provides detailed insights into how outbound travel movements by mainland Chinese are impacting the global travel industry. It combines data from more than 3,000 Chinese international travellers and 1,500 Hotels. com accommodation partners globally with Hotels.com’s own data and other third-party research. The Hotels.com CITM identifies the growing influence of Gen Y travellers – the so-called tech-savvy ‘millennials’ aged 18 to 35. Fifty-nine percent of hoteliers surveyed say they’ve experienced an increase in Chinese guests aged 35 or under in the past year and they expect this trend to continue to grow.
The growth is especially strong in the Asia Pacific region, where 78 percent of hoteliers reported an increase. Another feature of this year’s results is the growing financial muscle of the top 10 percent of travellers in terms of overseas travel spend. On 73,770.66 THB per day including accommodation, they parted with 4 times more than that of the average traveller, who spent 17,796.10 THB. However, this pales into insignificance in comparison with the top five percent of spenders, who shelled out over six times more than the average (111,703.74 THB), indicating the emergence of a ‘super-luxury’ class.
Using the internet to research and book overseas trips has become the norm for Chinese travellers, while the use of mobile phones for planning and booking their travel has skyrocketed. In the past 12 months, 80 percent of Chinese travellers have used an online device including mobiles, desktops and laptops to plan and book travel, compared with only 53 percent last year. Half of all Chinese international travellers now use apps on their smart phones to plan and book trips, up from just 17 percent the year prior.
According to the number of rooms booked on the Hotels.com Chinese website in 2014, the top three countries which Chinese travellers visited were the USA, Thailand and Hong Kong. Australia, Japan and France are the top three countries Chinese travellers intend to visit in next 12 months. In New Zealand, Sweden and Argentina, Chinese travellers were the biggest spenders on hotel accommodation in 2014.
