Europe rethinks appeal to China's tourists
Source: Agencies |
March 11, 2013, Monday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
EUROPEAN countries will need to focus less on beach holidays and more on communist history, rolling landscapes and even poetic trees if they want to take advantage of growing numbers of tourists from China.
According to the China Tourism Academy, some 200 million Chinese could be traveling abroad each year by 2020, up from 82 million in 2012.
While the overriding image of the Chinese tourists in Europe is one of busloads of shoppers heading for the luxury boutiques of Paris and Milan, Europe must not get carried away by these stereotypes and think of other ways to tempt them on a long-haul flight, tourism experts said.
"We've been thinking not like Chinese, but like Europeans," said Eduardo Santander, head of the European Travel Commission. "Europe is still the No. 1 tourism destination so far but that may dramatically change in 10 to 15 years if we don't change some patterns."
For Chinese tourists, the sun and beaches of the Mediterranean that are so popular with Brits, Germans and Russians hold little appeal, said TUI Travel CEO Peter Long.
Instead, they want to visit places that hold historical relevance for their own culture, they enjoy classical music and, wanting to escape the smog back home, they appreciate a clear blue sky, Santander said, citing a study the group had done among Chinese Internet users.
Interesting places for Chinese travelers looking to explore communist history include the German city of Trier, the birthplace of Karl Marx, and Montargis, a little-known town 60 miles south of Paris.
History lovers
History lovers are keen to visit Montargis because it was home to late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping during the 1920s and said to be the place where a group of Chinese students first proposed the idea of a Communist Party for China.
And if you see groups of Chinese people admiring a willow tree at King's College in Cambridge, it is because it is mentioned in a much-loved modern poem "On Leaving Cambridge" by famous poet Xu Zhimo.
With the eurozone crisis and austerity measures crimping travel budgets in Europe, it has become all the more urgent for countries such as Spain and Greece to look outside their traditional British, Dutch and German source markets for income.
In Europe, demand for cross-border travel is due to rise by just 2 percent in 2013, compared with 7 percent for Asia.
In Spain, where tourism accounts for 11 percent of gross domestic product, 57.7 million tourists visited in 2012. But arrivals from Britain, the country's biggest source market with close to a quarter of the total number of visitors, were flat.
"The British and the Germans are not getting richer ... and the times of flying for 10 pounds (US$15) from London to Spain are ending," said Wolfgang Georg Arlt of Chinese tourism research institute COTRI.
"Forty years ago, when Germans and Brits first started coming to Spain and Greece, they were a strange race too," said Martin Buck, who helps organize the ITB, the world's largest travel and tourism fair.
"But Spain and Greece used the chance to make those visitors into an important pillar of their economies. Why shouldn't they do the same with the Chinese?"
According to the China Tourism Academy, some 200 million Chinese could be traveling abroad each year by 2020, up from 82 million in 2012.
While the overriding image of the Chinese tourists in Europe is one of busloads of shoppers heading for the luxury boutiques of Paris and Milan, Europe must not get carried away by these stereotypes and think of other ways to tempt them on a long-haul flight, tourism experts said.
"We've been thinking not like Chinese, but like Europeans," said Eduardo Santander, head of the European Travel Commission. "Europe is still the No. 1 tourism destination so far but that may dramatically change in 10 to 15 years if we don't change some patterns."
For Chinese tourists, the sun and beaches of the Mediterranean that are so popular with Brits, Germans and Russians hold little appeal, said TUI Travel CEO Peter Long.
Instead, they want to visit places that hold historical relevance for their own culture, they enjoy classical music and, wanting to escape the smog back home, they appreciate a clear blue sky, Santander said, citing a study the group had done among Chinese Internet users.
Interesting places for Chinese travelers looking to explore communist history include the German city of Trier, the birthplace of Karl Marx, and Montargis, a little-known town 60 miles south of Paris.
History lovers
History lovers are keen to visit Montargis because it was home to late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping during the 1920s and said to be the place where a group of Chinese students first proposed the idea of a Communist Party for China.
And if you see groups of Chinese people admiring a willow tree at King's College in Cambridge, it is because it is mentioned in a much-loved modern poem "On Leaving Cambridge" by famous poet Xu Zhimo.
With the eurozone crisis and austerity measures crimping travel budgets in Europe, it has become all the more urgent for countries such as Spain and Greece to look outside their traditional British, Dutch and German source markets for income.
In Europe, demand for cross-border travel is due to rise by just 2 percent in 2013, compared with 7 percent for Asia.
In Spain, where tourism accounts for 11 percent of gross domestic product, 57.7 million tourists visited in 2012. But arrivals from Britain, the country's biggest source market with close to a quarter of the total number of visitors, were flat.
"The British and the Germans are not getting richer ... and the times of flying for 10 pounds (US$15) from London to Spain are ending," said Wolfgang Georg Arlt of Chinese tourism research institute COTRI.
"Forty years ago, when Germans and Brits first started coming to Spain and Greece, they were a strange race too," said Martin Buck, who helps organize the ITB, the world's largest travel and tourism fair.
"But Spain and Greece used the chance to make those visitors into an important pillar of their economies. Why shouldn't they do the same with the Chinese?"
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