High-earning, well-educated Chinese spend an average of over US$45,00 on annual trips, and nine in 10 travelled to Asia for holidays in the last 12 month.
Thailand most popular destination for Chinese luxury travellers. (Image credit: silatip/iStock)
These findings were revealed in the GfK Luxury Travellers online survey, which polled 300 Chinese travellers with high household income (US$10,000 and above per month).
Around four-fifths (80%) of all respondents said they travelled out of China at least twice and up to four times in the past one year. They spent an average of US$5,800 on flight and accommodation and US$5,600 on miscellaneous purchases during each trip.
In the past year, more than nine in 10 of the well-heeled travellers in China have visited a country in Asia, with the most popular being Thailand, which was visited by one in three (33%). Outside of Asia, Europe was the second most visited region (20%) followed by America (15%)
Laurens van den Oever: Demand for personalised travel.
Laurens van den Oever, global travel director at GfK, said: “The study brought to light some of the latest trends in China’s luxury outbound travel sector, an increasingly number of information sources are being used and accessed by a growing number of consumer having high demand for personalised travel,”
These could be presented as challenges or opportunities, depending on how in tune with the rapidly changing market condition are the service providers in this sector, he added.
The high spending power of these large numbers of affluent travellers has made China into one of the world‘s biggest driving force for the global tourism market, noted van den Oever.
“These luxury travellers are willing to pay more for a higher quality of service and customised level of unique travelling experience – definitely a small but very important segment for the travel sector to pay special attention to.”
• Featured image credit: (tourists at Eiffel tower): Ximagination/iStock
