Outbound China Travel to Boom in 2022: The long-term outlook for China outbound travel is looking promising according to the ForwardKeysTraveler Statistics forecast – a new feature just rolled out by the Valencia-Spain headquartered research and analytics firm ForwardKeys. It foresees an increase of 38.7 percent on year-on-year variation for 2021, while 2022 will see a giant increase of 83.8 percent. U.S. travel suppliers and DMOs should be a little patient, however, as the first global region to benefit from this excited Chinese of travelers from China will be neighbors in the Asia-Pacific, followed by Europe and, in the last position, North America.
“We see that some destinations’ borders have already been opened for Chinese travelers as the Asia Pacific is the most dependent on Chinese arrivals, and in the long-term, we predict that regional travel to the Asia Pacific will remain the fastest-growing destination in post-COVID travel,” says Nan Dai, China market expert at ForwardKeys. Click here to read the original article.
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The Role of Loyalty Programs in Shopping Tourism: From MacauBusiness.com and the Macao Institute for Tourism Studies (IFTM). A recent research paper focused on loyalty programs in shopping tourism suggests retailers should not simply offer loyalty memberships to shopping tourists, but also emphasize member privileges in retail promotions. The work—by a lecturer and by a former scholar from IFTM—said this would help maximize the desired impact on consumer behavior of loyalty programs, including strengthening the relationship between customer and shopping brand. Authors IFTM lecturer Dr. Veronica Lam Iok Keng and Dr. Anthony Wong Ip Kin, from Sun Yat-sen University in mainland (Guangzhou) China, pointed out that shopping tourists often seek purchases that represent value for their money. “Distinctive member benefits such as price discounts and special packaging can be more attractive to Chinese tourist shoppers due to their large purchase volume abroad as the result of their gift-giving culture,” they wrote. (Click here to read the original article.)
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China says it will take measures against U.S. over the latter’s visa restrictions on Chinese officials.
Toward the end of last month, China said through its official news media channels that it would continue to take necessary countermeasures to defend its legitimate rights and interests in response to additional visa restrictions by the U.S., according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The U.S. has imposed additional visa restrictions on some Chinese officials over alleged human rights issues, according to a statement by the U.S. State Department, noting that “Family members of such persons may also be subject to these additional restrictions.” read the statement.
At a regular press briefing, Wang Wenbin, the spokesperson for the Foreign Affairs Ministry, and deputy director of the Foreign Ministry Information Department, urged the U.S. to retract the visa restrictions, and said that China will come up with countermeasures depending on how the U.S. acts.
The U.S. move came less than a month after it announced new visa rules that limit the duration of travel visas for members of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and their immediate families.
Wang said that the U.S. has “weaponized” visas on the excuse of a series of issues that have included China’s Hong Kong and Xinjiang affairs, constantly imposing visa restrictions on Chinese personnel.
Also, at about the same time as Wang’s remarks, the U.S. Commerce Department published a new “military end user” list in the Export Administration Regulations, which list will include 58 Chinese and 45 Russian companies.
.On December 7, the U.S. imposed financial sanctions and a travel ban on 14 senior members of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, China’s top legislature, over Hong Kong issues. Then, three days later, China decided to impose equivalent sanctions on U.S. officials for their stance on issues related to Hong Kong as a countermeasure to U.S. sanctions, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson told reporters at a news briefing, saying that several U.S. politicians and their anti-China rhetoric were “ridiculous” and “pathetic.”
The rhetorical give-and-take between the U.S. and China is the source of no small amount of agitation for those who are trying to sell and market the USA (although the market has been dormant during the COVID-19 crisis). Of late, the official statements from the Chinese government have not, as they have at times, actually encouraged Chinese citizens not to travel to the United States, but they do make Chinese travel agents and tour operators hesitant to promote travel to the U.S.
