Chinese travelers are beginning to take more trips abroad, including to European destinations.
The recovery of outbound travel demand from China could even reach pre-pandemic levels by the end of this year, said Mingjie Wang, chief correspondent at China Daily.
“We’re now coming to the point of 2019 levels,” Wang said.
As a podcast guest on the latest episode of “The Upgrade: EMEA Hospitality News,” Wang said Chinese travelers made 155 million international trips in 2019, spending approximately $250 billion.
Much of that travel ceased during the pandemic years. Even by 2023 — as more countries and destinations had returned to normal business — Chinese travelers were hindered by a lack of flight capability and worries about their welcome and safety on international trips. As a result, people in China took more domestic trips across the country or if they did travel internationally, it was to Southeast Asia countries.
Destinations in the Middle East are doing well attracting Chinese travel demand, Wang said. The region's main attraction is that it is a mid-haul destination and because the Middle East is “promoting vastly and significantly. Saudi Arabia wants to attract five million Chinese travelers by 2030,” he added.
But cities and destinations in Europe are building strong demand momentum and the continent “is on the top list of where the Chinese wants to travel in terms … 90%, maybe by end of 2025 above 2019 levels.”
Wang reiterated that Chinese travelers' choice of destination comes down to two factors: safety and the ease of getting travel visas.
Chinese traveler types have changed, too. Wang cited the emergence of FIT travelers, the Chinese now being more comfortable traveling on their own, although some group travel will continue.
“For Gen Z that might be 60% or 70% of them traveling on their own or in small family groups,” Wang said, adding only 11% of Chinese residents have passports.
But the new Chinese guest is looking for something new, something unusual, and Wang gave the example of Iceland as a destination that captures the Chinese attention for exoticness.
Following the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, approximately 300 million Chinese became interested in winter sports, Wang said.
“There is skiing in China, Japan and South Korea, but, ultimately, they want to go skiing in Europe,” he added.
For more from Mingjie Wang on such topics as social-commerce platform RedNote — also known by its Chinese name Xiaohongshu — the new Chinese travel bible and what useful information and trends hoteliers and marketers need to be aware to engage with the new breed of FIT travelers, listen to the podcast embedded above.