China is epicenter of a tourism boom that is changing travel
Oneof the strongest drivers of global economic growth isn’t factories or financial services or internet startups, it’s what we do when we’re not working. We are becoming a planet of tourists.
For the past seven years, the travel-and-tourism sector has outperformed the overall economy every year, contributing as much as $7.6 trillion in 2016, including the wider impact on the economy, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council. During the next decade, the council predicts, almost one in four jobs created worldwide will be related to tourism.
Nowhere is this revolution more dramatic than in Asia.
A rising tide of travelers from China is spreading out across the region, out-shopping, outspending and out eating every other nation. They are filling hotels, tour buses and cruise ships. They are overwhelming airports and train stations, and they are sending home petabytes of pictures that encourage their compatriots to join the global invasion.
Their ranks are being swollen by millions of others from around Asia, a generation who would rather raise their status with a foreign adventure than with a luxury bag.
“People’s personal brands are being defined by the places they visit,” said Simon Russell, chief executive officer of London-based luxury travel group Scott Dunn, which last month bought rival Country Holidays Travel from Singapore to expand its Asian clientele.
China already accounts for more than a fifth of the money spent by outbound tourists, twice as much as the next-biggest spender, the U.S., according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization. And the Chinese have barely started - only around 5 percent of them even have passports, and the government is issuing about 10 million new travel documents every year.
As shown by Japan in the 1980s, citizens of nations that get rich go places. The emerging nations of AsiaPacific will add more than 50 million new outbound travelers in the five years ending in 2021, according to Mastercard.
Overwhelmingly, they come from a smartphone-addicted generation that is rewriting the rules. The ubiquitous flag-following Chinese tour groups are giving way to what the industry calls FITs — free, independent travelers — who are using the internet to plan itineraries, book flights, translate signs and chronicle their exploits.
“A lot of customers are wanting to do things their way,” said Chang Theng Hwee, a Singaporean who quit banking 25 years ago to build a travel business that offers bespoke holidays for wealthy Asians in destinations like Antarctica and the Himalayas. “They’re not interested in joining a group.”
The shift is transforming the region, unleashing more than $100 billion in infrastructure spending for bigger airports and jet fleets, new railways, hotels and theme parks.
The effects of this boom include soaring property prices, stress on the environment, and an avalanche of apps and innovations that reimagine the way we experience the world.
By 2021, Chinese tourists will spend $429 billion abroad, according to a report by CLSA. And they are spreading out. Weekend jaunts to the shops in Hong Kong or the casinos in Macau are being usurped by new favorite destinations. During the next three years, Japan, Thailand, the U.S. and Australia top the must-visit list, according to the report, with other destinations in Southeast Asia — especially Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines — following close behind.
For developing nations, that’s putting a strain on infrastructure, underpinning the biggest airport-building program in the region’s history. Thailand doesn’t have a single international airport that isn’t way over its designed capacity, and long lines at immigration are common. At least 178 new airports are planned in AsiaPacific, according to Visa Inc., and hundreds of existing facilities are being expanded or upgraded.
The result is a second revolution in tourism in the region; one that is being fueled by social media: the opening up of more islands, cities and remote locales to divert vacationers from the overcrowded and increasingly jaded tourist hotspots of the 1990s and 2000s.
Indonesia has a plan to create “10 Balis,” targeting places like the former World War II battleground of Morotai Island for new holiday destinations. Thailand, which heavily promotes tourism under the banner “Amazing Thailand,” has teamed up with Japan to build a high-speed railway that would open up places along the route to the north of the country. Neighbor Malaysia is countering with its own cross-country rail project to the coasts of Kelantan and Terengganu, states promoted this year in the capital’s international airport under a “Joyful Malaysia” campaign.