China Outbound Tourism Research Institute Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Georg Arlt COTRI China Outbound Tourism Research Institute, Heide / Beijing El turismo chino:

China Outbound Tourism Research Institute

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Georg ArltCOTRI China Outbound Tourism Research Institute,

Heide / Beijing

El turismo chino: deseos, evolución y potencialidades

Chinese Outbound Tourism - demand, evolution and potentials

of a growing market in a Post-Western world

Sevilla June 3, 2011

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• COTRI China Outbound Tourism Research Institute is the worldwide leading independent research institute for analysis, consulting and quality assessment relating to the Chinese Outbound Tourism market.

• Headquarter in Heide/Germany, China office in Beijing

• Director: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Georg Arlt FRGSActive in P.R. of China since 1978 Former owner of Inbound Tour Operator China->EuropeCOTRI founder and director since 2004Professor at West Coast University of Applied Sciences


Demand –

China’s Outbound tourism: current situation

Evolution – China’s Outbound tourism: background

Potentials – Spain as a destination for the Chinese outbound source market


Demand –






2010: 48 billion US$

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2010: 57 MillionsOutbound trips

China again No. 1 source market in Asia even if not counting trips to Hong Kong / Macao

Outbound expenditure higher than income from

Inbound-Tourism


2000: Global market share 1.5%

2010: Global market share 5.8% (est.)

2000: One out of 67 international travelers from China

2010: One out of 17 international travelers from China

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Share of Chinese outbound travels during three quinquenniums 1995-2009 (Source: CNTA / COTRI, no reliable data available before 1995)

More than 60% of all trips with the five years 2005-2009

Most Chinese arestill first-timeinternationaltraveller

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CNTA China National Tourism Administration Prediction for 2015 (Source: CNTA May 2010): 100 million Chinese Outbound travelers spending100 billion US$ outside Mainland China

Global Tourism Outbound Source Market No. 1 in 201x:


China’s Outbound Tourism 2011:

Quantitative Growth, also qualitative development:

Growing support by Chinese government for outbound tourism

Easier access to passports, visa, hard currency

Steps towards the liberalisation of involvement of international tour operators in the Chinese outbound market

Growing interest for new destinations and forms of travel


Chinese outbound travelers will continue to populate the main tourism destinations but they have increasingly higher expectations of being treated according to their preferences.

www.patastore.com


Demand –





“All the ripping down of the old and throwing up of the new across China today cannot be explained as a matter of economic necessity alone. It is too frantic to be considered so simply. The visible Chinese project is, among much else, a signifier of an almost compulsive psychological urge to self-reinvent – to make ‘being Chinese’ mean something new.” (Patrick Smith: Somebody Else’s Century, 2010:23)


After three decades of unprecedented economic growth combined with the replacement of socialist and internationalistic ideas with consumerist nihilism and nationalism, the Chinese society in 2011 is at the cross-roads in it’s development:

Internally the way of modernization without modernity has run its course

Externally the Deng Xiaoping policy of "keep a

low profile and never take the lead” ( 稻光养晦 , taoguang yanghui) is no longer applicable


Some commentators compare China today with Japan 1989, some with Japan 1937.

Patrick Smith likens China today – mentally, not economically – to Meiji Japan in the 1880s, trying to modernize while inventing a fake past as an identity anchor. What does that mean for tourism?

8 m high Confucius statue in front of Chinese Museum of History, TiananmenSquare, Beijing, unveiled in January 2011, removed again in April 2011


Chinese outbound trips within the Confucian world done for reasons like:

Business trips

Visiting Friends and Relatives

Relaxation

Shopping / Trading

Overseeing OFDI companies

but also for

Showing off towards the neighbors


Chinese outbound trips outside the Confucian world used additionally for other reasons:

Gaining prestige back home

Radiating Soft Power in the destination

Learning how to behave as a rich person


Gaining prestige back home

International travel is still giving major bragging potential – which is not vanity, but necessary for securing a place among the Big Boys in a society based on status and connections


Radiating Soft Power in the destination

International travel has been discovered by the Chinese government as a Soft Power tool to show off to the world the economic might of China


Learning how to behave as a rich person

China is the home of 1.1 million households with more than 1 million US$ in cash and stocks (in 2010, up from 650,000 in 2009 – plus 67%), representing 2/1000 of the total. (Germany: 370,000, representing 5/1000)

Almost all of them are first-generation rich (average age of millionaire in China: 36 years) using international luxury tourism as a training ground to learn how to behave as a (super-)rich person


Demand –





The Chinese tourism market is segmenting:

Mass market: Still “Race to the bottom”

Low price – bad quality package tours

Upper end: “New tourists”

Sophisticated customers looking for sophisticated offers – but still being Chinese travelers.


Every country, destination and tourism service provider has to work it’s way through the “Acculturation Curve” (after Hofstede 1994)

Euphoria

Ignorance Adaptation

Despair

Most major European players have arrived at the “Adaptation” end in Chinese inbound tourism. Spain as a late starter is getting closer to the “Euphoria” point.


The late start provides a chance for Spain to avoid the mistakes suffered by early movers in the field.

However, to be able to learn it is necessary to understand that not the Chinese outbound tourism has just now started, but that it has only now got into the focus of many stakeholders in Spain.

The Chinese outbound travelers are already since a decade in the middle of a process of learning, sophistication and segmentation.


It is necessary to acquire meaningful data:

“60% of Chinese outbound travelers are between 30 and 50 years old” will not help to develop a customized offer:

A Chinese person born in 1980 grew up in a world of uninterrupted economic growth

A Chinese person born in 1960 grew up in the Cultural Revolution

Beware of averages - On average there are two cars per km² in China. Still traffic jams in the big cities are remarkable. We are dealing not with the Chinese, but with the top 10% of society


It is necessary to know what you are selling:

It is easy to get a fake FC Barcelona shirt for a few dollars on every Chinese street corner – still FCB sells lots of expensive original shirts in China

There are enough sightseeing and leisure offers available inside China to last for a lifetime – still international travel is the wish of every upward mobile person in China

The name of the product is PRESTIGE, STATUS, BRAGGING POWER

and sometimes money laundering…


It is necessary to provide adequate training for service providers and to use adequate communication channels:

The messageChinese guests are

is much more convincing when spoken in Chinese by the receptionist, museum guide etc. and the products are customized according to the Chinese criteria of quality.


Spain is such a wonderful country not only for Europeans – let us

share it with the rest of the world, including China!


Thank you for your attention!

Contact: [email protected]

www.china-outbound.comwww.chinatraveltrends.com

China Outbound Tourism Research Institute Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Georg Arlt COTRI China Outbound Tourism Research Institute, Heide / Beijing El turismo chino:

Documents

outbound tourism easier

millions outbound trips

inboundtourism slide

china office

main tourism destinations

growing market

chinese government

global market share