China to topple US as largest overseas tourism market this year

In another sensational development China is expected to overtake the US this year as the largest overseas tourism market measured by travellers and continue to grow, the industry’s biggest global distribution

system provider said on Tuesday. Chinese is expected to make up 20 per cent of the world’s foreign tourists by 2023, a report by Spain-based Amadeus IT Group SA said. The number of Chinese families able to afford overseas holidays will double in the next decade.

China’s fast-growing economic growth and increasing consumer spending are thrusting the trade in tourism to outside the country, the report said. “Chinese travellers’ passions for outbound tourism are unstoppable,” Jiang Yiyi, director of the China Tourism Academy’s international tourism development division, said.

Academy statistics show the number of outbound travel trips increased 18 per cent to 98 million in 2013 and could reach 114 million this year. China became the largest outbound travel market, measured by total spending, in 2012, accounting for 9.5 per cent of the total global spending.

Amadeus’s report said Asia, particularly its Northeast region, will become more important to the business-travel market because volumes in the West won’t recover to pre-2008 levels until 2018.

China may also exceed the US as the largest market for business-travel spending as early as 2015, according to a report released in March end by The Global Business Travel Association.

 
It forecast Chinese spending to grow 17.8 per cent year-on-year to $309 billion in 2015, as
economic growth remains steady, although slowing. Domestic travel is the main driver, making up about 95 per cent of spending on Chinese business travel, the GBTA said.

Chinese airlines still benefit from business travel, although growth is slower than previous years.

Air China Ltd’s sales revenue from first- and business-class seats rose 7 per cent year-on-year in 2013, according to its annual report. Passenger numbers for the two premier cabins of China Southern Airlines Co Ltd grew 14.5 per cent in 2013 compared with the previous year.