Nearly half visited at least one country in Southeast Asia
Shanghai, 10 December 2014 – Chinese tourists are known to be high spenders and one of the biggest contributors to the growth of global tourism. Findings from a recent GfK study conducted amongst high earning, well-educated Chinese revealed that 93 percent have travelled within the Asian region in the past one year, and nearly half (47%) chose to go to countries in Southeast Asia—making it the most visited region for leisure trips amongst this group of people.
GfK presented these these insights at the recent China Luxury Travel Forum organised by Travel and Leisure magazine in Shanghai on 26 November.
Around four-fifth (80%) of all respondents said they took leisure trips around and outside of China at least twice and up to 4 times in the past one year, spending an average of USD 5,800 on flight and accomodation and USD 5,600 on miscellaneous purchases during each trip.
The GfK Luxury Travelers online survey commissioned by Travel and Leisure magazine polled a representative group of Chinese travellers with high household income (USD10,000 and above) in October to November this year with the objectives of gaining deeper insights into the behaviour, attitudes, and consumption patterns of luxury travellers in the country.
According to the survey, 86 percent of them utilise the internet to search for information while planning for their vacation. Over 7 in 10 said they booked their air tickets(73%) and hotels (70%) using a computer, while a lesser proportion of 20 and 25 percent respectively used their mobile phones to complete their bookings for the same purposes. The more traditional methods of contacting call centres and physically going to the store made up less than 5 percent for hotels and flights bookings.
“Rapid technological advancements are offering consumers an expanding number of information sources, not to mention more choices of touch points to complete their booking to suit their convenience,” observed Laurens van den Oever, Global Travel Director at GfK. “These can be presented as challenges or opportunities—depending on how in tune with the rapidly changing market condition are the service providers in this sector.”
In the past year, more than 9 in 10 of the well-heeled travelers in China have visited a country in Asia. Outside of Asia, Europe was the second most visited region (20%) followed by America (15%)
“With the high spending power of these large numbers of affluent travellers, China has become one of the world‘s biggest driving force for the global tourism market,” said van den Oever. “These luxury travelers are willing to pay more for a higher quality of service and customised level of unique traveling experience—definitely a small but very important segment for travel sector to pay special attention to,” he concluded.
