Tourism from China to Africa expected to surge

Officials have revealed that 19 African countries now have formal organizations to offer Chinese tourist groups the best in what their markets can offer, and vice versa.

The latest figures from the China National Tourism Administration, showed 553,000 Africans traveled to China in 2013, a 5.3 percent on 2012, while 1.895 million Chinese traveled in the other direction - a massive 80.4 per cent increase on the previous year.

Xiong Shanhua, deputy director general of the administration's marketing and international cooperation department, is now predicting Africa will account for a growing share of the 500 million Chinese tourists expected to travel outside China in the next five years, and added major efforts are underway to maximize opportunities for tourism companies in both markets.

Top of the priority list is to increase the number of direct flights as long hours spent in transit is highlighted in surveys as a major deterrent to Chinese tourists - and cut the prices of air tickets between destinations.

Also Chinese tourists are being deterred from traveling to Africa because of a lack of quality hotel accommodation compared to other markets.

Xiong used Ghana as a good example of how those conditions were starting to affect Chinese figures to Africa.

In 2013, he said, 13,000 Chinese nationals visited Ghana, a 9.8 per cent fall in numbers; in the other direction, just 16,000 Ghanaian tourists visited China, a 2.1 per cent annual fall.

The African figures were released within overall Chinese tourism numbers which showed the sector mow contributed 5 per cent of China's total GDP, and employed 80 million people.

Last year, 56 million international tourists came to China - a 3.5 per cent drop on the previous year providing the economy with $51.7 billion in foreign exchange revenue.

Nearly 98.2 million Chinese tourists traveled abroad, an 18 per cent rise, while 3.26 billion domestic tourist trips were made at home, an increase of 10.3 per cent, which delivered $491.6 billion in revenue, a 14 percent increase.

(China Daily Africa Weekly 09/26/2014 page3)