Custom doc title: Int’l Hotels’ Guide to China International Travelers
Hotels.com, a global leading hotel booking websites, released its China International Travel Monitor (CITM) on August 21.
This research found out that 75% hotels oversea said Chinese customers made up 5% of all room bookings. 45% hotels said the number of Chinese tourists increased last year, among which Asia-Pacific had the highest growth rate of 61%.
Hotel managers thought that Chinese travel market would keep growing in the coming three years, 10% managers expected 50% growth rate and 47% said the growth rate might be somewhere between 11% to 50%.
96% of Chinese went outbound travelling for holidays while over half said they also went abroad for studying or business. Compared to package tour, 62% Chinese tourists preferred free and easy travel. Hotel managers confirmed this new trend, said 70% of their Chinese guests chose travelling alone. In its previous report, package tour travelers almost equal to free and easy travelers.
China has surpassed Germany and United States to be the largest tourism market. Chinese outbound tourism market reached USD 102 billion in 2012, 40% more than that of 2011.
Besides, CITM report pointed out that hotels needed to improve their service for Chinese tourists, 26% Chinese tourists hoped that hotels could support Chinese payment method. 75% were expecting language improvement in the hotels, such as brochures, newspapers, TV programs and websites. 42% wanted more Chinese speaker staff in the hotels.
Chinese tourists expectation were much too high for hotels, although 25% hotels provided Chinese culture training programs, only 11% offer Chinese brochures.
In booking, many Chinese tourists said family or friends recommendations were very important, next was online booking websites and comments. 27% chose destinations through social network, this trend was higher in tourists below 35 years old with 35%.
Hotel managers should adjust their marketing strategies based on CITM research, they should focus on social network. The report also reflected that hotel managers had made progress in facing the challenge of mobile devices popularity among Chinese. Many countries and travel agencies made some changes for Chinese tourists, but the growing speed of Chinese tourists still outpaced their improvements.