With health and safety as key concerns in the time of coronavirus the habits of travellers worldwide have changed which, in turn, led to new travel trends in the new normal.
Such concerns have impacted the travel intentions of Chinese consumers who are showing preferences for customised and FiT tours while bleisure travel features high among the business community, as findings of the recent ITB China Travel Trends Report revealed.
According to the market survey conducted among 200 China outbound travel agencies and travel companies, the prevention and control of the pandemic at the destination are considered most important to Chinese travellers.
Over 90% of the agencies in the survey said travellers want Covid prevention at destination, while over 70% stated sanitary measure in place will also become key concerns, as will stable flights schedules (see chart below).
To avoid places with crowds and large travel groups self-driving tours are most popular, with 70% the travel companies listing this product their customer would want in the next year. FiT and customised tours will also be in demand at the expense of group tours (see chart below).
“After the outbreak travellers may prefer outbound products focusing on safety, health and wellbeing, while the demand for natural landscape and customised travel will also increase,” said He Yong, president of Beijing-based HCG Travel Group.
Island, trips with family and outdoor outdoor and medical tours are among the most popular in the coming year (see chart below).
Bleisure travel will be still one of the trends for business travel in the future, stated the report. Over 60% the surveyed travel companies expect business travellers to make personal or family trips to the destinations of their travel next year.
On how to effectively and quickly restore the Chinese travel market, answers and suggestions from the respondent companies were varied: “Sustain and improve awareness and popularity of destinations”, “Align and upgrade travel products focusing on safety and health”, “Communicate with Chinese partners to keep aware of changes in the Chinese market”, “Set up flexible operation process and quick response mechanism” and “Engage in pre-sale activities of travel products“.
Commenting on the survey Eduardo Santander, executive director of European Travel Commission, advised European tour operators to start work on preparing products to answer the needs of potential travellers and visitors in the aftermath of the outbreak.
“These products should focus on health, wellbeing, nature and should be customisable. Examples of such products could be self-guided tours. Chinese tour operators should get in touch with potential partners in Europe to help prepare these products, especially taking into account the Chinese experience in restarting domestic travel after the pandemic.”
• Featured image credit: TuiPhotoengineer/Getty Images
