Chinese tourists

Luzi Matzig's "Asian Trails" travel company has traditionally targeted Europeans keen to explore the exotic, far-away lands of Southeast Asia. Recently he discovered a new market of tourists - the Chinese.

According to Bangkok-based Matzig, a 40-year veteran of the Southeast Asian travel business, there is a new trend of English-speaking, upmarket Chinese, who stay in five-star hotels. "Maybe it's only two percent of the market, but at Asian Trails we are intending to handle this kind of Chinese tourist."

During the first half of this year, over 30 million Chinese travelled abroad, a nearly 20-percent hike over the same period in 2010.

Destination Asia

According to mid-year arrival statistics compiled by Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), the top destinations for Chinese tourists were all in Asia – Hong Kong (12.7 million), Macao (7.5 million), Japan (920,000), Thailand (834,000), Taiwan (829,000) and Singapore (757,000).

The Chinese are taking up a bigger chunk of markets, some of them farther afield. According to the Xinhua news agency, Chinese were the top visitors to the Maldives in 2010.

During the 12 months ending on June 30, Chinese were fourth place in terms of source countries for tourist arrivals to Australia, and the largest in value, with 3.3 billion US dollars spent.

Last year, over 100,000 Chinese visited New Zealand. Chinese tourist spending is expected to top that of visitors from Britain and the US for the first time by the middle of next year, a strong prediction of New Zealand's Ministry of Economic Development.

In Singapore, Chinese arrivals reached almost one million between January and July, up 38.4 percent, placing them only behind Indonesian visitors. Chinese tourists spent 1.6 billion Singapore dollars (1.23 billion US dollars) in the city-state last year, nearly half of which was spent on shopping, according to government estimates.

dpa
Editor: Sarah Berning