Will China Growth Continue in 2018? One clue to answering this question lies in a report given by Laurens van den Oever, chief marketing officer of ForwardKeys, ,who was speaking at the World Bridge Tourism conference in London, said: “The Chinese dragon is breathing more hotly than ever. Bookings for outbound travel during Chinese New Year, in February 2018, are currently 40 percent ahead of where they were at the same time last year.” Looking at a broader period, from the beginning of November until the end of February, bookings are also strongly ahead. The growth story has been running for a number of years and the long-term trend shows no indication of slowing. According to the Chinese National Tourism Administration (CNTA), outbound travel has grown 270 percent since 2008 and it is forecast to reach 200 million departures by 2020. In the same period, traffic to the USA has increased from 493,000 visitors in 2008 to 3,964,000 in 2018, according to the most recent forecast of the U.S. National Travel and Tourism Office—a more than eight-fold increase.

Ctrip China’s Only OTA? Not Yet. A July 2016 article posted on ChinaMoneyNetwork said “Ctrip is now the absolute monopolistic force in online travel in China. One anonymous analyst jokingly describes it as holding a 100 percent market share.” But not yet. Third-quarter resuts showed that China’s number one OTA posted substantial gains, with net revenue growing by 42 percent year-on-year, to $1.197 billion (7.9 billion yuan). Gross margin was up 82 percent compared to Q3 2016, up from 82 percent in Q2 2017. However, according to an item in Jing Travel, “Ctrip faces potentially fierce competition from Tencent-backed Meituan-Dianping. To make matters worse, Ctrip shareholder Priceline has also invested substantially in Meituan-Dianping. Ctrip executives have declined to comment on these developments, but all indications are that Ctrip is in for increased domestic and foreign competition.”

Where do Wealthy Chinese Want to Live Abroad? According to a recently released study by the Hurun Report, the U.S once again leads the list of destinations for Chinese high-net worth individuals (HNWI) looking to move abroad. Canada came in second and the UK ranks No. 3.

The Hurun Report interviewed 304 individuals with net worths ranging from $1.5 million to $30 million to produce these findings, which were released in its report: Immigration and the Chinese HNWI 2017. The report only considered countries that had investment immigration policies.

Just released by the global management consulting firm of Oliver Wyman, a new report based on a survey of 2,000 people representing a cross section of Chinese travelers—Prepare for turbulence: The Chinese Traveler of Today and Tomorrow—tells travel sellers that Chinese tourism is being transformed through more diverse tastes on the part of the Chinese traveler.

To cite the report: “Chinese travelers are becoming more independent, spending longer in distant locations–and are even spending less on shopping. … the traditional ways of serving them may no longer work.”

Alluding to the sharp drop in travel by Chinese to South Korea due to the latter’s the deployment of the THAAD missile defense system—year-on-year visitor numbers  to South Korea dropped by 67 percent in April 2017—the report says that “Travel-related businesses should also consider the impact of high-profile negative events that might put Chinese tourists off a destination.” On an upbeat note, however, the report indicates that past declines in Chinese tourism due to trouble with a specific destination typically reverse after six-to-nine months.

The report highlights three areas of activity measured in both 2015 and 2016 that the travel seller should pay attention to:

—a shift in the way Chinese travelers are planning their travel as, increasingly, more people are planning and booking travel on their own;

—a change in the composition of the travel party, with more families traveling together; and

—a decline in the importance of shopping as, overall, shopping fell to the third reason to travel in 2016, down from second in 2015, and shopping as a percentage of overall travel spend is likely to continue to drop.

The following tables illustrate the changes in these areas of activity.

A new analysis by Phocuswright Research seems to suggest to anyone genuinely interested in marketing their travel product or their destination to China—now the world’s largest source of outbound international travel—that the use of mobile app tools is a must. The latest numbers show that the share of online gross bookings made via mobile devices is growing rapidly worldwide. As such, it is critical for travel sellers of all stripes to understand where their audience prefers to book and how that preference is evolving. While the USA and most countries in Europe are experiencing promising growth in Mobile Booking Penetration (MBP), China is setting its own mark that is far beyond the world standard.

(Note: The Phocuswright analysis was released shortly after a new study sponsored by Jing Travel, which says that 95 percent of China‘s internet users use mobile to connect online, spending 2¼ hours every day on their phones—a total that equals, for the first time, for the amount of time they spend watching television.).

The Phocuswright analysis notes that China had already achieved 40 percent mobile booking penetration MBP by 2015. It now stands at 59 percent and is expected to climb to 77 percent by 2020, far outpacing the rest of the world. At the same time, the United States, which is far behind China at 22 percent MBP is expected to reach 30 percent by 2020; this will place the U.S. ahead of only France among key developed countries, and it will comprise less than half of China’s expected MBP.

What accounts for China’s lead in MBP is the size of its population (1.4 billion), which generates large user numbers regardless of share: China now hosts over 1 billion mobile subscribers, the majority of them on smartphones. In India (it also has a large population, with about 1.34 billion and a correspondingly large population of mobile subscribers), the majority of consumers only have access to basic mobile devices, which contributes to a relatively low MBP, explains Phocuswright.

One explanation for the high MBP is that Chinese online users never had much of a chance to use desktops, PCs or laptops. This is because broadband Internet and affordable PCs arrived relatively late in China, many Chinese never owned a desktop or laptop computer; the smartphone was their first device, making them “smartphone natives” who are much more likely to embrace mobile e-commerce. This environment fostered the popularity of WeChat, the world’s most advanced mobile messaging and commerce platform, which many Chinese use for daily tasks including messaging, making utility payments and ordering food delivery.

While the share of travel bookings taking place within WeChat is relatively small, the ubiquity and widespread use of WeChat Wallet and Alibaba’s Alipay are helping Chinese travelers become much more comfortable making large purchases on their phones than the rest of the world. In addition, Chinese OTAs Ctrip, eLong and Qunar have successfully enticed travelers to book on mobile with deep discounts and a smooth booking experience. (According to yet another recent study, from the Amadeus IT Group, the top three travel apps used by Chinese travelers are from Ctrip WeChat and Tuniu.)

As far as travelers from other key Asian markets are concerned:

—MBP in Japan is driven by Rakuten, which generated more than half of its overall online retail sales (not just travel) via mobile in 2016.

—In India, MBP is being galvanized in part by the popularity of mobile wallet solutions such as Paytm.

Meanwhile, travelers in the U.S.—says Phocuswright— are hanging on to their ingrained habit of booking on desktop or laptop (or through a call center, for that matter).