Chinese tourists benefit global tourism industry

Chinese tourists cross a street near the Grand Palace in Bangkok, Thailand, Oct 3, 2016. [Photo/VCG]

Chinese tourists not only contribute a lot to domestic tourism revenue but also to the income of many other countries and regions since nearly 7 million outbound trips were made from Chinese mainland during the weeklong National Day holiday.

Domestically, Chinese tourists made 726 million trips during the holiday, which took place from Oct 1 to 7, generating over 599 billion yuan ($87 billion) in tourism revenue, according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

Overseas, Chinese tourists from more than 100 cities went to more than 1,000 destinations in about 100 countries and regions, according to a report released by China's largest online travel services provider Ctrip on Monday.

Top 10 destination countries and regions were Thailand, Japan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia and the US, according to the report.

Official data from Thailand showed that in the first eight months, the country received more than 7.7 million tourists from Chinese mainland, a year-on-year increase of 16.51 percent, bringing it about 9 million yuan revenue.

Compared with last year, the trips to the US fell about 42 percent during the seven-day National Day holiday. In the first nine months, the number of Chinese tourists to the US dropped about 5 percent.

Trips from female tourists accounted for 56 percent of the total outbound trips during the holiday, 42 percent from families and 30 percent from couples, according to Ctrip's report.

Different from purchasing lots of overseas products during trips in the past, Chinese tourists paid more attention to the experience of local cultural and folk activities.

According to another online travel services provider Lvmama's report, each Chinese tourist spent 6,247 yuan on average on an outbound travel product. And a travel product in Norway cost over 20,000 yuan per person.

Mobile payment continued to soar at popular overseas destinations for Chinese travelers, according to a report from major mobile payment provider Alipay.

Bicester Village, an outlet shopping area near Oxford in the United Kingdom, Dotonbori commercial area in Osaka, Japan, and Australia's Sydney Airport were cited as the top three locations for Chinese consumers to pay using their phones.

The number of transactions using Alipay at these three locations jumped 90-fold, 70-fold and 55-fold, respectively, which helped outbound per capita spending to surge 30 percent year-on-year, the company said.

Prior to the holiday, the mobile payment operator had published a list of "40 outbound cashless destinations", including airports, commercial zones and outlets.