In the old days, traveling used to be a luxury. Now however, it’s a new way of living for some Chinese.

This week our family is spending the Christmas holidays in Vietnam. Until 8 years ago my parents in law never went abroad? Now they have been to almost 10 different countries.

Traveling is a big trend! About ten to fifteen years ago the richer population slowly began to explore their own country which led to a sharp increase in domestic tourism. When I came to China for the first time in 2002 and visited all the famous tourist attractions, there were almost no queues because there were simply no large crowds.

  Now however it has come to the point that our family tries to avoid domestic tourist attractions as much as possible, simply because it is way too busy. In October 2016 during the so-called "Golden Week" no less than 750 million Chinese citizens undertook a trip at home or abroad, often for tourism. My wife’s hometown of Taian is home of one of the most famous mountains in China, Taishan. In recent years during holiday season it occurs regularly that they mountian needs to be closed down for the public due to danger of overcrowding. The safety of the tourists who make the four-hour climb would otherwise be jeopardized. In the winter months the island of Hainan -the Chinese Hawaii –is an attractive location for the Chinese from northern China who would like to escape the subzero temperatures in their hometowns. Special events attract an even bigger crowd. During the World Expo in Shanghai in 2010, half a million people visited the exhibition on a daily base. In total, the exhibition welcomed 73 million visitors -mostly Chinese citizens-, an absolute record in the history of the World Expo.

Tourism abroad also undergoes a massive boost. While till the eighties of the 20^th century Chinese citizens experienced difficulties in traveling, now going abroad is a new trend. Not only are Chinese consumers very open to new trends and experiences, now it is administratively and financially also easier travel globally. As a result they really try to explore the world. According to the World Tourism Organization of the United Nations, in 2015 some 120 million Chinese citizens undertook a trip abroad, more than twice as many as in 2010. No country in the world does better. Visa application processes used to be very complicated, because many countries imposed significant restrictions. This however has simplified a lot in recent years. Southeast Asian neighbors especially are keen to capitalize on the wanderlust of the growing Chinese middle class. Many of my colleagues go on holiday in this region at least once a year. South Korea annually attracts six million Chinese tourists. When I was a week with my family in Seoul in the fall of 2015, the city was literally overrun with Chinese tourists. The South Korean visa-exempt Jeju Island is also a hugely popular destination, while Japan has made the island Saipan visa-free for Chinese tourists. In 2015, thirty million tourists visited Thailand: one in four came from China.

Also other countries are trying to attract more and more Chinese visitors. Schengen Visas for the European Union are much easier to obtain than in the past. In the past my Chinese wife needed to prepare a large number of official documents to apply for a Belgian visa. Now she gets a five year visa, simply because she is married to a Belgian national. Showing my identity card is enough to obtain a visa for her. When the United States launched a ten-year visa for the United States in 2014 more than two million Chinese tourists visited the country. Belgium also -and especially Flanders- tries. I saw in the subway in Beijing a campaign with digital ads Flanders extolled as a tourist destination. Traveling to Europe is also a relatively cheap. Because of the eurozone crisis, the euro lost much of its value. Chinese tourists can therefore spend more with the same number of Chinese yuan in Europe. When my wife and her parents were Venice, she told me that the San Marco square resembled Wangfujing, a famous shopping street in Beijing. It was almost fully occupied by Chinese tourists.

Chinese people not only travel abroad for tourist reasons, shopping is equally important. When observing Chinese tourists, one cannot fail to notice that shopping is more important than sightseeing. CITS, one of the largest Chinese travel agencies, announced in 2014 that all tours to Europe and the United States for the Christmas period of that year, were sold out a month in advance. Not surprisingly Chinese tourists spend huge sums of money abroad, especially for luxury products of famous brands. After all these products are abroad much cheaper than in China, where high import taxes and premium prices are in force. Especially cosmetics, perfume and luxury products such as handbags, wallets and fashion clothing are favorite items for the Chinese tourist. The American Bank Merryl Lynch calculated that in 2015 Chinese tourists in about 180 billion USD abroad, almost five times as many as in 2008. Each trip they spend about 2,500 USD, three times the global average. Overall they are number one spenders abroad. The World Tourism Organization estimates that 20% of the global tourism spending will be done by Chinese tourists.

According to a report by the bank HSBC Chinese consumers account worldwide for a third of the purchase of luxury goods. Two thirds of those purchases are made abroad. The sale of luxury goods to Chinese tourists represetens 40% of the total market in France and 35% in Italy . In the large European outlets Chinese tourists are everywhere. When I was in Brussels, I noticed that almost every store that sells Belgian chocolates near the tourist locations employ Chinese-speaking staff. Western luxury brands have also very actively and aggressively lobbied the US and European governments to lower the visa restrictions for Chinese tourists. To make it easier for Chinese tourists to spend their money, foreign stores sometimes have installed Chinese payment systems. Visa and Mastercard are global players, bit in China they only have a very limited market share. It’s especially UnionPay that dominates the Chinese market, and is nowadays present in more than 140 countries. Since one in five pounds being spent on London's Harrod's, come from Chinese tourists, the store has no less than 83 UnionPay payment terminals installed. In every major European airport one can witness Chinese tourists queuing at the duty-free counters to get the European VAT reimbursed.

In order to exploit as much as possible these new income streams some western hotels developed special services for Chinese tourists. A number of European hotels has fully focused on the growing Chinese market. When I was in the Netherlands, an owner of a hotel near Amsterdam told me that his hotel was for 80% filled with Chinese tourists. He was planned to adapt the hotel service even more to the cultural needs and requirements of its Chinese customers. The hotel chain Hilton Worldwide has nearly 110 hotels in 65 cities offering a special Huanying (welcome) program that specifically focuses on the provision of specific services for Chinese guests. Staff will also be trained to meet the needs of Chinese tourist or businessman. The growth of Chinese tourism is also in other ways broadly felt: the Chinese company Fosun not only purchased Club Med in 2015, it also took a stake in the British Thomas Cook.

Other types of tourism are also attractive. For example, some friends of mine often go on cruise holidays. And they are not the only ones: annually about 1.7 million Chinese tourists take a cruise. The sector is growing by 40% per year. The super rich want to go to ever more exotic destinations, away from the locations that the middle class is beginning to explore. Simply buying a Gucci handbag or having the latest BMW won’t do the trick anymore.. Those who can afford it, go to more exclusive experiences which –obviously- need to be shared with friends on WeChat. That’s why the parents of my son’s classmate regularly go to the Maldives. Safaris in Africa are also increasingly popular. In the winter of 2014 more than three thousand Chinese tourists travled to Antarctica, a trip that costs more than 30,000 USD per person. Wine tasting in France is a new trend. In Qianan where I used to live for 5 years, the owner of a steel company told me that he had bought a chateau in France. He proudly added that he visited his estate several times per year and took his friends for wine tasting. Medical tourism is also on the rise. Some friends of my wife travel to South Korea for plastic surgery, which has become a real booming business.

The boom in tourism also has negative effects. In the newspapers appear stories about Chinese citizen who misbehave. Foreign hotels and restaurants sometimes complain about tourists-especially the older generation- which are spitting in public, making too much noise or wasting too much food. Sometimes, there are also serious problems. A plane from Zurich to Beijing had to turn back due to a brawl between two Chinese passengers. In another case, a secondary student scribbled his name on a 3,500 year old Egyptian temple. In 2015 there were several incidents involving passengers who tried to open an aircraft door in midair. An official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that half of the cases which Chinese embassies in foreign countries deal with, are directly linked to the irresponsible behavior of tourists. The owner of the hotel in Amsterdam told me that he also sometimes experiences problems with Chinese guests. As his three-star hotel lies next to a picturesque harbor with traditional Dutch boats, it happened more than once that tourists climbed on the boats moored in the port to take pictures. Some of them even opened the doors to a peek inside the boats. Following complaints from boat owners, he was forced to install a special fence of three meters high between his hotel and the harbor.

Such incidents give the Chinese tourist a bad reputation and it is also in China itself fodder for discussion. On social media, these events are commented on in detail. Feelings of shame and loss of face for the Chinese nation usually predominate. The Chinese government is therefore trying to address the problem by teaching its citizens the need for civilized and polite behavior. They distribute brochures to familiarize tourists with Western culture and etiquette. One of the main reasons for this lack of civilized behavior lies in the Cultural Revolution. For a decade many schools and universities were closed. The result was that a whole generation has received little education. Besides that the amount of stories about inappropriate behavior, has course also to do with the huge number of tourists traveling abroad. The more people travel, the bigger the chance that someone has bad behavior. Now Chinese citizens from all walks of life abroad. A mixture of all strata of society as it were, and that obviously increases the risk of inappropriate behavior.

Although Chinese citizens are much more international than before, many of them have never before set a foot outside China. They simply have little idea about foreign manners. In 2004, when I arrived in China, the country was in some aspects rather closed where westerners were considered as unique. During one of my first visits to hair salon in a small town in north China, a stranger entered the barber shop and began to touch my blond hair to verify whether it was real. He had never seen a westerner, let alone felt his hair. It often happened that perfectly strangers invited me to have dinner with them or that youngsters approached me because they wanted to practice their English. Since a photo with a foreigner often meant something, I estimate that there are hundreds of pictures circulating, all made by strangers who lingered near me and wanted to immortalize me together with them. Even my children are sometimes still alive attractions. Seconds after the birth of my son in Taian nurses rushed in from adjacent operating rooms, where they provided assistance in surgery, in order to have a look the yang wawa (foreign doll).

Anyways, China is more international now than ever, and tourism will become more important to  the Chinese economy and the world in general.

Add comment