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I entered into the Chinese tourism market by chance, thanks to a student job I took on while learning Mandarin in Taiwan in the 1990s, which in turn led to a job in London for Gulliver’s Travel Associates (GTA), a global wholesaler of ground handling and accommodation. It provided me with experience of working with Chinese tour groups at the early days of Chinese outbound tourism to Europe. But even then, I didn’t expect the industry to grow and evolve as quickly as it has. Not until I took an offer to work and live in China in 2002, and saw the changes up close as they happened, did I understand how dynamic the sector is and how strong is the desire of Chinese to travel abroad. If you consider Chinese citizens were not allowed to travel for leisure until the 90’s, this energy is very understandable. And while many Chinese are still relatively inexperienced travellers who can lack the confidence of tourists from other countries, they are catching up quickly. The fast pace of change continues to amaze and excite me. The industry is following a standard evolution process, but it is happening faster and at a larger scale than anywhere else in the world.

            After having spent three years in China running an outbound travel business, I returned to London in 2005 and saw potential where others still did not. I had seen first-hand the growth of interest in travelling abroad, but at that time, the number of destinations that Chinese citizens were allowed to visit as tourists under China’s Approved Destination Status (ADS) policy was quite limited. When Britain signed the agreement that year, two years after the other EU countries, there was much talk in the UK media about the potential of Chinese tourism. But even then, very few people understood the significance of this trend. Seeing the potential to help educate the inbound sector and stay involved in China tourism, I launched consulting company ChinaContact, and partnered with a handful of far-sighted tour companies, attractions and tourism boards that wanted to understand more. That same year, I worked together with the inbound trade association UKinbound and the British tourist board VisitBritain to organise their very first delegation to China.

In the decade since, ChinaContact has consulted with national and regional tourism boards including VisitBritain, Tourism Ireland, PromPeru and the Ghana Tourist Board. The company has given training and helped conduct sales and education trips to China for many tour operators and hotel chains. The work with destinations and companies took me around the world, as more destinations on all continents became interested in attracting Chinese visitors. It hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Communicating the potential of Chinese tourism to the industry was a real challenge when I started out. Chinese tour groups were not prized, and sentiment was even negative in the early years; at that time, Chinese tourists were known for travelling in large groups, spending most of their time on the tour bus and embarking on whirlwind tours of 10 countries in two weeks or worse, while eating only Chinese food, staying at cheap hotels, chain-smoking and failing to appreciate the culture or intricacies of their destinations. These large groups and multi-country tours do still exist, but the profile of the Chinese tourist has changed significantly.      

Chinese tourists have quickly become much more sophisticated, moving away from bus tours and towards independent, self-organised travel, with trips to smaller destinations off the beaten track now a major draw. At the same time, luxury travel and shopping have taken off, and the spending power of Chinese has changed the very conservative attitudes of Western people about China and Chinese people. These developments have led me to found the partnership China Edge -aimed at helping the luxury sector in the UK – in 2013. 

While the global economic recession posed challenges to ChinaContact as a small business, we were fortunate that Chinese outbound tourism emerged as the only market to steadily continue its growth during this time. I am often asked why I don’t start my own travel company. Apart from the fact that I find working with different destinations and businesses around the world to be varied and satisfying, I also think my knowledge and experience is put to better use in the strategic work I do to prepare destinations, governments and businesses to handle Chinese visitors and plan their market entry approach. These clients have the large investment, scale and resources needed to create a successful business on the back of the Chinese market, but they need someone to guide them on their way.

The opportunities and challenges will continue to develop as the Chinese outbound tourism market does. The growth of independent and self-organized tours is especially important, as they will open up “off-the-beaten track” destinations to Chinese travellers and create the need for more localised services for independent travellers, including Chinese audio tours, Chinese travel guides that specialise in specific themes and sectors, cruise ship travel and adventure travel.

At the same time, Chinese from second-tier and third-tier cities are travelling out of the country in greater numbers. Their relative inexperience and lack of knowledge about other countries mean the potential for poor behaviour is still there, though they will be criticised by other Chinese, online, and self-correct faster. Indeed, this is just one way in which the internet has become a crucial factor that influences the Chinese market. In general, the impact of digital resources has been more pronounced in China than in other countries, and part of my work is also helping those outside of China take advantage of this phenomenon.

One way in which promotion and marketing has changed over the past decade, is in the prevalence of social media and mobile channels to reach the target audience. This can be a low-cost, quick and effective solution when done right. I included a few case studies in this book to illustrate the opportunity.

The Western hospitality and tourism industry will need to keep pace with changes and anticipate what’s coming next to continue to take advantage of the boom in Chinese tourism. Chinese hotel chains and travel organisations are investing around the world, and increasingly assertive Chinese companies may well want to take over more of the supply chain in the future. The international travel industry must be ready for this, and know how to make their services enticing enough to attract and maintain a Chinese clientele while not alienating other prospects.

When I launched ChinaContact, I knew what was coming but could not imagine the impact would be so dramatic and so fast. Keeping abreast of new developments and anticipating trends in Chinese outbound tourism will continue to be crucial for both the work that I do and for the travel industry as a whole. For this reason, we continually publish free weekly and monthly news summaries and opinion pieces on the Chinese outbound travel sector.

Roy Graff, 2015