Travel

Changing face of tourism

By Yu Tianyu (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-06-01 10:11

Rong Jikai, a retired senior professor in Beijing, has been overseas to "dozens of places" such as Japan, Thailand and Nepal -- but always for work and never as a tourist. But since his retirement, Rong, in his 80s, and his wife Xiao Shuqin, in her 70s, are trying their best to make up for this. So far, they have been to more than 40 countries and regions around the world, including many countries in Europe, North America and Southeast Asia. And that's just from 2009.

Rong says that during his business trips, his hectic schedules did not allow him to see much of the countries he visited. "Now, traveling seems to be making up for those missed opportunities," he says.

Rong and his wife have always been passionate about international history and geography. He says anyone will understand the Crusades better after visiting Europe, while stories of the Pharaoh come to life after a visit to Egypt.

The couple is just part of the changing face of China's increasing number of outbound tourists, traveling all over the world. In 2010, more than 57 million Chinese tourists went abroad, a year-on-year increase of 20 percent, statistics from the National Tourism Administration show.

And the UN's World Tourism Organization says China will be the world's fourth-largest source of outbound tourists by 2020.

Li Zhongguang, researcher and director of the Industry Research Institute at the China Tourism Academy (CTA), says the main change in China's tourism over the past 30 years has been that traveling is no longer regarded as a luxury or privilege, but something for the mass consumer.

"Growing out of nothing, the tourism industry took off in the early 1980s as a method of generating foreign exchange for the government, and was dominated by foreign tourists coming to China," Li says.

Today, while foreigners still come to China in droves - about 26 million foreign tourists visited the country last year according to the National Tourism Administration - the reasons for Chinese citizens going overseas have changed.

Take, for example, Zhang Chi, a 27-year-old self-confessed "shopaholic". She travels abroad at least twice a year on shopping-themed tour groups, with the July to August and December to February periods her favorite.

And she always buys cosmetics and skin-care products as they are relatively cheaper, with more choices available, overseas.

Compare this to 30 years ago when hardly any Chinese citizens went abroad, and even travel within China was difficult.

Tang Binling, a retired engineer from Urumqi of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region in Northwest China, can still remember traveling in 1988. To get to his hometown of Changsha in Central China's Hunan province, he had to endure a three-day journey in a crowded and dusty train carriage, sitting on a hard seat for the almost 3,000-km journey.

He had been yearning for the trip for 30 years since settling in the remote northwest region as one of 200,000 "Bingtuan" soldiers who came from all over the country to support infrastructure construction and economic development in Xinjiang in the 1950s.

"To save money, I was just eating nang, a staple bread of Xinjiang cuisine, with tap water," Tang recalls. "But I was still in an ecstasy of delight and couldn't stop thinking how my brothers and sisters would look like after a 30-year separation."

Today, the journey would take only a few hours by air. Even by train, Tang would have saved a day and traveled in a more comfortable environment.

Now, Tang can afford to visit his hometown, as well as his wife's home in Nanjing, in East China's Jiangsu province, once every two years.

Li, from the CTA, says traveling around the country is widely accepted as a part of daily lives.

Feng Bin, general manager of Beijing UTS International Travel Service Co Ltd, says Chinese tourists - domestic and international - are gradually abandoning their old ways of traveling.

It used to be that they would sleep during the journey and take photographs of the attractions before departing for the next stop, Feng says.

His company now places greater importance on letting people have more time to experience their trips.

Chinese tourists are also now more sophisticated, with more than 61 percent doing online research before their trips, and about 48 percent making adjustments to their trips based on information they receive from online travel bulletins, according to a report by New York-based market research company AC Nielson.

Feng says the preference for overseas destinations generally depends on age. Those aged from 20 to 35 prefer Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Malaysia, while those above 35 prefer Europe, Australia and the United States. Senior tourists typically choose South Africa and Egypt, Feng says.

Statistics by the travel search engine Qunar.com show the top destinations for travelers from Beijing are Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, Bangkok, New York, Paris, Kuala Lumpur, London and Sydney.

And online figures by the Chinese hotel and destination reviews website Daodao.com show that about 34 percent of the travelers choose budget hotels, 26 percent prefer four-star hotels and 16 percent choose five-star hotels.

Li says younger tourists are also influenced by trends, either at home or abroad. For example, when Chinese director Feng Xiaogang's movie If You Are The One was released in 2008, its scenes of the Xixi Wetland in East China's Zhejiang province attracted thousands looking to experience the romance featured in the movie.

"Trip planners along with travel agencies should keep a close eye on such phenomena and trends," Li says, adding that agencies are now targeting younger tourists.

That's why so many tourism sites, agencies and hotels have started promotion via microblogging sites to appeal to young travelers.

Dai Bin, head of CTA, says that with 140 countries and regions open to Chinese tourists, business is good for the 21,649 travel agencies in China.

(China Daily 06/01/2011 page16)