More China Travelers Heading Beyond Greater China in 2016
More Chinese travelers are taking outbound trips from China and this part of our Rise & Fall of the Middle Class is bound to drive incremental demand across all aspects of tourism and shopping. While the early waves of China tourists that traveled to foreign lands were wealthy and drove sales of luxury products and services, the looming question with this latest wave of travelers is if there will be different demographic implications?
By the end of September, 2016 had seen 101.5 million border-crossings from Mainland China take place. This is the first time that within the first three quarters of a year more than 100 million outbound trips from China were recorded.
According to the latest statistics based on the research of my institute, the COTRI China Outbound Tourism Research Institute, 51.7 million of these went beyond Greater China (Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan), whereas 49.8 million — less than half of the total number of 101.5 million — stayed within Greater China.
This represents a year-on-year growth rate of 3.3%, which is split into a negative rate of -6.2% for Greater China and a still impressive 14.5% for the rest of the world.
Source: For The First Time, Chinese Outbound Trips Cross 100 Million Mark In Nine Months
