Thanks to a rather cold and unwelcoming America courtesy President Donald Trump, Europe seems to be gearing up for a fantastic year of Chinese tourism. In a brand new trend, Chinese tourists are increasingly buying package tours to Europe, surveys said. According to data tracked by consultancy ForwardKeys, leisure travel bookings for July and August in Europe are up more than 4 per cent from the same period of last year after an even stronger June, which coincides with a Chinese holiday.
“This year will certainly be the year with the highest number of arrivals from China ever,” said Wolfgang Georg Arlt, director of China Outbound Tourism Research Institute, a consultancy based in Germany. He said, “Trump has been helping to push Chinese tourists to go to other countries... They see this as a crazy guy and who knows what could happen.” While Chinese bookings for Europe are going up, that for the US has gone down more than nine per cent for the year to July 22 compared with the same period of 2017.
Chinese tourists are collectively the world's biggest spenders on international tourism, putting in a whopping $258 million international tourists trips last year. They spent an average $1,800, however, Arlt said the average was probably distorted by lavish spending by a wealthy minority. Record tourist spending abroad even helped to push China's current account into deficit in the first quarter for the first time since early 2010, offsetting the considerable trade surplus.
While there are still questions on how much is actually spent on tourism abroad, there is little doubt the spending is only going to keep growing. Two thirds of Chinese expect to increase their travel budget in the next 12 months, according to a survey of over 3,000 Chinese people in May.
