With the week-long National Day holidays around the corner, many Chinese touristsare ready to travel overseas. According to information from various travel agencies,Chinese tourists are turning their eyes to more countries and regions instead of justfocusing on popular destinations. Their favorite travel destinations include Hong Kong,Macao, South Korea, Japan, Southeast Asian islands, Italy, India, Turkey, and Dubai.Chinese tourists have visited more than 100 countries and regions.
China's rapidly growing outbound tourism has made significant contributions to globaltourism and even economic recovery.
Last year, Chinese tourists made nearly 70.3 million overseas trips, and theirconsumption during the trips amounted to 69 billion U.S. dollars, only after their U.S.and German counterparts. China's outbound tourism market, which is 1.2 times that ofthe United States and 3.5 times Japan's, is expected to be the world's largest in thenear future.
Instead of restricting outbound tourism after the 2008 global financial crisis, China haspromoted the orderly development of its outbound tourism to help destination countries'tourism industries out of the crisis. According to a report by China Tourism Academy,China's outbound tourism contributed 30 percent to the over 4 percent year-on-yearincrease in the number of international tourists in 2011, becoming a stable driving forcebehind the prosperous development of the world tourism industry. China's outboundtourism has become a stable growth pole in the world tourism industry.
The current global economic uncertainty makes China's outbound tourism even moreimportant. The country's outbound tourism is influencing the direction of global tourism.Many countries have taken Chinese tourists as a focus of their long-term tourismpolices, adopted visa facilitation measures, and developed tourism products catering toChinese tourists.
In addition to giving out these "tourists red packets," China should enhance its right tospeak at the world tourism and make the countries of destination fully understand thediversified needs of Chinese tourists. With the expansion of outbound scopes and theincrease of outbound frequency, the tourism demands also become diversified. Inaddition to sightseeing and shopping, Chinese tourists more hope to experience the lifeof local people and the local cultural atmosphere. Some countries of destinationunilaterally equate the outbound tourism of Chinese tourists with shopping,exaggerating consumption while ignoring other needs. Therefore, the destinationcountries should further improve the reception conditions, provide humanized servicesystem and develop diversified travel contents especially vacation and leisure productsto attract Chinese tourists.
Compared with the international influence of China's outbound tourism, its tourismindustry is still lack of authority in the order of international tourism. The situationshould be changed as soon as possible. The tourism industry of China not only shouldenhance the right to speak on making international tourism rules including theinternational tourism cooperation, the economic statistics of tourism, the trade barrier oftourism service and low-carbon tourism, it should also strive to gain the rights of pricecoordination, rule-making, order maintenance and organization and development.
Chinese tourism enterprises should take advantage of outbound tourism to open theoverseas markets, giving service to Chinese tourists and improving the internationalcompetitiveness of Chinese tourism. Some tourism experts said that China can learnfrom Japan to recover the expenditures of Japanese tourists in the countries ofdestination by establishing Japanese enterprises there. Going out is the best way forChinese tourism enterprises to solve the tourism deficit.
Read the Chinese version: 中国出境游是向世界派发“红包”
Source:People's Daily Overseas Edition , author: Zhao Shan.
