China Tourism Academy’s latest report shows total revenue generated from China inbound tourism market reached $51.646 billion with an increase of 3.27% year on year, ranking 4th in the world, following America, France and Spain in 2013.
China received 129.0778 million foreign travelers with a decrease of 2.51% YoY, ranking 4 in the world, following France, America and Spain in 2013.
In 2013, top 10 countries by foreign travelers were South Korea, Japan, Russia, America, Vietnam, Malaysia, Mongolia, the Philippines, Singapore and Australia. It is estimated that foreign travelers from South Korea will exceed 4.3 million in 2014. The report also shows that China inbound tourism market suffered decline in 2013, and there were 651.7 thousand travelers from Thailand with an increase of 0.63% YoY, 625 thousand travelers from Britain with an increase of 1.07% and 533.5 thousand travelers from France with an increase of 1.66%.
At present, inbound travelers’ consumption is relatively weak and 70% of them spend between $501 and $3,000. The inbound travelers’ satisfactory index was 75.46 in 2013, which was in a basic satisfactory level. Chinese tourism destinations still need to improve in some aspects like city management, public service, industry service and so on.
Foreign travelers favor Chinese traditional destinations like Beijing, Xi’an, Shanghai, Guangzhou, the Yangtze three gorges and etc. They tend to know about Chinese culture mainly involving Chinese art, historic landmarks and sites, traditional cuisines, shopping and so on. Some Chinese travel agencies develop various tourist products like skiing and hiking to meet foreign travelers’ needs.
Till now, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Chongqing, Shenyang, Dalian and Xi’an have implemented policy of Visa-free within 72 hours transit, opening to 51 countries in the world. This policy can be helpful to China inbound tourism market.
New media and event marketing have been new methods to promote China inbound tourism. China tourism department has carried out online and offline marketing. China has launched promotional website about tourism in other countries and opened official Wechat, Facebook and Twitter account to improve digital marketing system for China tourism industry.
Also read: Rise of the China Outbound Tourism
