Ten Things You Must Know about China Tourism Market

Hurun Report recently published "The Chinese Luxury Traveler 2015". This is the 4th version of the annual report. The 40 pages professional report go deep into many aspects of China high-end travel market, including travel decision making process, social media preference, travel tendency, retail and sales.

There are two innovations in this report: 
1. Surveyed near 300 high-end Chinese traveler, analyzed their top 5 destinations. 
2. Interviewed over 70 senior executives from global high class hotels, including China mainland, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

There are ten viewpoints that being very worth to note:
1. The rate of overseas tourism is increasing: For those super travelers, who spending over 200 thousand in travel every year, they went abroad four times, accumulatively 33 days in a year on average, and 20 of them in tourism, 13 of them in business. Last year, the overall Chinese overseas travel also rose 17.8% to 116 million journeys.

2. Travel agencies have increasing influences: Over 70% travel plans were provided by agencies, half hotels reservation were made through them as well. And according to the survey, American Express is one of the best travel agencies that serving the Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan area.

3. About travel destinations:
Antarctic tourism is being popular: according to the report, Antarctic was the most impressive destinations last year and it was visited most during this past spring festival holiday. The wonderful natural landscape is the primary reason (49%) that made super tourists travel to the polar area. Following are the rare seen creatures (19%) and curiosity (17%). The Cruise tour was also a hot option last year. Maldives meets the favor of the rich in China. Australia stands the top among the most popular destinations, and France ranks the second. British and Italy rose obviously on the rank, while Germany and Switzerland dropped. The super tourists also favor Hawaii and Dubai as they have distinctive features. Sanya and Tibet are the most popular domestic destinations. The super tourists pay attention to the innovative experience when making their future choices. Medical travel becomes a hot topic as 60% of the rich in China had medical travel experiences.

4. The most impressive oversea experience and the travel during the spring festival holiday:
The most impressive experience took 13 days, went with 6 companies on average, increased one more day and one more company respectively. Most super tourists choose to go with families, usually 4 people during this spring festival holiday. Nearly half of the travelers purchased business level tickets rather than economy level during transportation. The rate was only one third last year.

5. When to travel:
Most super tourists (56%) traveled on variable schedules, increased 11 percent than last year. Summer break is the most preferred vacation time to travel, followed by spring festival and October 1st holiday.

6. Hotels:
Over half super tourists choose their hotels by themselves and book through travel agencies. Peninsula Hotel is most popular among super tourists. Followed by Mandarin Oriental, who rose fast on the rank. Shangri-La, who was always the most popular one during the past 11 years, dropped to fifth. The membership card that being used most frequently belong to Hilton and Marriott. 

7. Flight:
Over half super travels hold gold or higher level membership of airlines. Air China is the primary Chinese airline member in Star Alliance. Over 66% interviewees are active member of Air China. There are more and more super tourists choosing business level tickets.

8. Experiential tourism becoming popular:
Like Antarctic tourism, those places can provide experiences with unique features will become hot destinations. Such as Africa, arctic area and Pacific islands, etc.

9. Social Media have increasing influence:
WeChat, instead of email, has now become the most popular application (59%) on mobile end, 19% percent higher than last year. Followed by email (38%) and photo apps (32%). Public accounts on WeChat also become the most frequently viewed information source (42%). Messages pushed by tourism related apps are the second info source (26%). 94% super tourists installed travel apps in their mobile devices, like Ctrip (94%), Qunar (15%).

10. Travel retail and sales increased:
Tourists from China spent most money in shopping, taking 35% share in global market. Russian tourists are the second (13%). Chinese tourists' most favored shopping destinations are France (22%), Germany (13%), British (12%), and Italy (12%). Europe is the dream destination in future three years of most super tourists (47%).