CHINA: Chinese tourists Spent 258 Billion US Dollars On International Tourism In 2017

China continues to lead global outbound travel, according to a report published by the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO).

Titled - The UNWTO Tourism Highlights 2018 Edition, the report noted that Chinese tourists spent 258 billion US dollars on international tourism in 2017, almost one-fifth of the world's total tourism spending.

According to the report, overall international tourist arrivals grew by seven percent to 1,323 million in 2017, the largest rise since 2010.

The growth in arrivals was echoed by a strong increase in exports generated by tourism, which reached 1.6 trillion US dollars in 2017.

The UNWTO explained that the 2017 results were driven by sustained travel demand for destinations across all world regions, including a firm recovery by those that have suffered from security challenges in recent years.

The organization also highlighted how the economic recovery of economies such as Brazil and Russia benefited both advanced and emerging destinations.

France remained the most popular tourist destination with Spain moving into second place, while Japan moved into the top ten earners from tourism after six straight years of double-digit growth.

Available data for early 2018 has confirmed international tourism continues to grow this year with a six percent year-on-year increase for the first four months of the year.

Chinese tourists visited domestic attractions over 2.8 billion times in the first half of 2018, up 11.4 percent year-on-year, according to a report released Wednesday by the China Tourism Academy.

The report said urban residents accounted for almost 2 billion visits, an increase of 13.7 percent compared with the same period last year, while residents from the countryside paid about 800 million visits, up 6.3 percent.

The revenue generated by domestic tourism was 2.45 trillion yuan (358 billion US dollars), a rise of 12.5 percent, the figures show.

Red tourism, which refers to activities and locations related to the Communist Party of China, has seen a boom over the past six months, according to the report.

Visits to the 436 registered scenic spots that highlight the nation's revolutionary history hit a record high of 484 million, up 4.83 percent year-on-year. Revenue reached over 25 billion yuan, a near 6 percent increase.

The outbound tourism market also saw growth in the first half, with trips to Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan as well as foreign destinations reaching over 70 million, up 15 percent year-on-year.

The total number of China's domestic and inbound tourist trips will surpass 5.1 billion this year, up by more than 11 percent from 2016, a report showed Wednesday.

Tourism revenue this year will be more than 5.3 trillion yuan (about 802 billion US dollars), up 13 percent from a year earlier, according to a report jointly released by the China Tourism Academy and the data center of the China National Tourism Administration.

In 2016, the overall contribution of tourism to the national economy stood at 11 percent, with total tourism revenue up 13.6 percent to 4.69 trillion yuan.

With the fast expansion of tourism, China has become the world's largest source of outbound tourists and the fourth largest destination of inbound tourists.

In the first three quarters this year, the number of domestic tourists rose 13.17 percent year on year, with revenue from domestic tourism surging 16.55 percent.

The report forecast that China's tourism revenue would be more than 6 trillion yuan in 2018.


Tourism Observer

RUSSIA: Russia Draws In Hordes Of Chinese With 'red tourism'

Drawn by its Communist past and a visa-free regime, mainland Chinese tourists are flocking to Russia in droves as it develops new routes touting "red tourism."

Nearly 410,000 Chinese came to Russia last year putting them on top of the list of foreign tourists, according to the federal tourism agency.

Their number has swelled 10 percent since 2013, when Germans topped the list of overseas visitors.

"We had lots of work this summer," said Viktoria Borgacheva, the head of the association of Chinese interpreters and guides in the city of Saint Petersburg, Russia's main tourist destination.

"I would say our workload has increased 30 percent since last year," Borgacheva said.

In the first half of this year alone, more than 200,000 Chinese tourists visited Russia.

Russia's second city of Saint Petersburg, the former imperial capital renowned for its world-class museums and luxurious palaces, hosted nearly 26,000 Chinese tourists in 2014.

Experts estimate that between 40,000 and 50,000 Chinese tourists could visit Saint Petersburg this year, the Russian tourism industry union said.

But Saint Petersburg's European flair and its winding canals are not the main attraction for them, according to Russian tourism officials.

Chinese tourists flock to Saint Petersburg chiefly to soak in the city's turbulent revolutionary history as the scene of three revolutions — one in 1905 and two in 1917 — that precipitated the end of the tsarist era and ushered in the Soviet Union.

"While Europeans come to Saint Petersburg above all to admire the old capital and the Hermitage (art museum), Chinese tourists want to see Leningrad and its revolutionary history," Borgacheva said, referring to Saint Petersburg's Soviet-era name.

'Red circuit'

In July Moscow and Beijing officially launched an ambitious "red circuit," a tourist route tracing the life of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin in four Russian cities.

The eight-day journey starts in Moscow, where tourists can gape at hammers and sickles on Soviet-era buildings and in the sprawling metro network. The tour ends in Saint Petersburg, the scene of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917.

Costing US$1,000 per person excluding flights, the "red circuit" promises to be lucrative for the dozen Russian tourist agencies participating in the programme, expected to be in full swing by next year.

Russia's new "red circuit" finds a counterpart in China, where Russian tourists can retrace the life of Mao Zedong, the first chairman of the Chinese Communist party.