China’s Upcoming National Day Golden Week—it begins Oct. 1 and runs through Oct. 8—has become a barometer for measuring the destination preferences and habits of the country’s international travelers.
From China Daily, there are these notes:
- Ctrip.com predicted in a recent report that 650 million Chinese will travel in the eight-day Golden Week holiday; about 6 million will choose to go abroad, setting a record.
- Jiang Yiyi, director of the International Tourism Research Institute with the China Tourism Academy, said, “Chinese tourists no longer only select traditional hot journey places such as Thailand, the United States and Japan to spend their holidays. Countries such as Kenya, Morocco, New Zealand and Peru have all become a new attraction.”
- Shi Yuduan, chief marketing officer of Ctrip‘s vacation business department said the company has seen a 300 percent rise in the number of tourists going to Croatia year-on-year. The country is the setting for the popular “Game of Thrones” TV series. She added, “There is also a strong growth in Czech Republic, Iceland, Spain and Northern Ireland, too, where the HBO TV series was filmed.”
- Yudain also said packages featuring cruises, diving, camping, plastic surgery, shooting, casinos, safaris and other sports are all popular options for Chinese consumers as they have diversified the ways they conduct holiday activities.
- China also is the biggest source of rental service users among all the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China.
- Most Ctrip users choose to travel for four to six days, while a growing number of tourists prefer to travel longer.
- A quarter of Ctrip customers chose to travel between seven and 10 days, up 140 percent year-on-year.
- Thirteen percent prefer more than 10 days, up 300 percent from a year earlier.
- Domestic destinations are also getting more popular. According to the China National Tourism Administration, 593 million tourists traveled during this period in 2016, up 12.8 percent year-on-year. It generated 482.2 billion yuan ($73.9 billion) in revenue in all areas, up 14.4 percent year-on-year.
