Chinese travellers change their approach to seeing the world
China is now one of the largest tourism markets in the world - in 2014 Chinese tourists made 3.61 billion trips, with 116.59 million traveling abroad.
Deborah Popely is an assistant professor at Kendall College's School of Hospitality Management and said China had already overtaken the U.S. as the world's largest outbound tourism market. There were 97 million outbound tourists in 2013. Moreover Chinese tourists abroad have exceeded German and American tourists as the biggest spenders internationally, accounting for 25 percent of the world's luxury consumption.
While the majority of Chinese tourists are still taking package tours, some, with large budgets, are finding new ways to experience travel abroad.
Dinner with the duke
While working as the Chinese correspondent for German media, Henrik Bork traveled a lot and realized the opportunities for tourism in China. In Beijing in 2013 he launched lychee.com, an online travel agency for boutique and luxury hotels. At first his agency only offered a hotel booking service. But clients wanted to know what they could do after arriving at these high-end hotels in beautiful locations so Bork began offering tourism and leisure options based on the customers' interests and wallets.
Recently a Chinese bank asked lychee.com to prepare a tour for some of its leading clients. "They told us the number of the tourists and the dates. Luckily, they gave us a budget, but usually customers don't. We had to study their experiences and preferences, make recommendations, and present a preliminary plan to them," Bork told the Global Times.
Like other tailor-made trips organized by the company, the plans for the tour kept changing until the very day of departure. The agency had to be discreet and could not disclose any client information to its service providers. And the whole experience had to be exclusive. The tour group was flown to London and, as one of the highlights, the visitors spent a day in a castle, having lunch with a duke (there are only 11 dukes in England).
"One of our tailor-made tours usually includes a dozen events like this. And it can cost up to $500,000 or even $1 million for the trip," said Bork. "Many claim to do tailor-made trips, but real tailor-made trips are not common. Very few companies can do this."
His agency can offer, among many adventures, to fly clients for a safari in Africa and show them the vast animal migrations on the plains. It can take people diving with sharks, where sharks swim unimpeded as the tourists are protected by an underwater metal cage. Lychee.com can arrange private tours of the exquisite Sagrada Famila basilica in Barcelona or the Louvre in Paris.
With very demanding clients and challenging tasks, Lychee.com only organizes two or three tours a month. Its clients are usually company owners, heads of major institutions or wealthy Chinese individuals. This is a totally different experience from the traditional Chinese tourism experience of 30 years ago.
Boring Tours
Han Yongwei, the president of the board of Chi Chu Travel, told the Global Times that Chinese travel agencies used to provide a massive amount of boring package tours.
"The wholesalers designed package tours with a single itinerary and distributed the product to agencies in China. The travel agencies were retailers. They took the orders, give the information about their clients to the service provider. They didn't even go on these trips themselves," Han said.
With no options, however, the Chinese tourists lapped up these tours. They were loaded onto aircraft with a group of strangers and a tour guide who behaved like a babysitter. They were taken to famous European or American cities, stood in front of sightseeing spots and lectured by a guide before being whisked away for another attraction.
That was why some of the popular attractions like the Champs Elysees in Paris and the duty-free shops in Hong Kong were always full of Chinese tourists, while many other beautiful attractions and exciting places were ignored.
In Germany on a tour once Han saw a lot of motor homes parked on streets. He asked his translator what they were used for and he was told this was how many Europeans traveled but they were quite unsuitable for Chinese tourists. Han was affronted by this remark and set out to try one of these motor homes himself and then bring Chinese tourists to use them in Europe.
He spent seven years developing the motor home project and, in 2006, he took his first Chinese tour group to Germany and Switzerland for a holiday in motor homes. They drove on European highways, stopped at the places they wanted to visit, camped out and had fun at local festivals. Motor home tours are now a major part of the services being offered by Chi Chu Travel.
