US records slump in Chinese holiday travelers

Chinese tourism to the United States is set to fall for National Day holidays, South China Morning Post reported.

Chinese flight bookings to US fell 42 percent year-on-year in next week's holidays, also known as "golden week", the report said.

The first three quarters of this year have seen a 16.7 percent decrease in flight booking from China to the US, the report said citing figures from travel fare search engine Sykscanner.

Chinese visitors have an outsized spending power, ringing up $34.8 billion in 2016 in retail, accommodation, travel and educational spending, the report said citing US government data.

The number of tourists from China to the US so far this year has fallen almost 5 percent on last year and weekly bookings started to decline in April, the report said.

With a deepening decline, the August's flight bookings from China to the US went down 8.4 percent compared with the same period in 2017.

Chinese outbound travel worldwide maintains strong with 5.5 percent growth from 2017, according to ForwardKeys study, based on 2018 data compiled from global airline booking databases.