Skift Take
From wild safari getaways to its vibrant colorful cities, Africa has more than enough to tempt the 200 million Chinese tourists forecast to be trotting the globe by 2020. But is enough being done to roll out the welcome mat? It depends where you look.
Editor's Note: Skift launched a new series, Gateway, to broaden our news coverage geographically with first-hand, original stories from correspondents embedded in cities around the world.
We are featuring regular reports several times per week from Beijing, Singapore and Cape Town, and look for us to add other cities soon. Gateway Cape Town, for example, signifies that the reporter is writing from that city although his coverage of the business of travel will meander to other locales in the region. Read about the series here, and check out all the stories in the series here.
With more than 120 million travelers venturing abroad each year, the Chinese outbound market, which is expected to top 200 million people by the end of the decade, offers enormous potential for African countries looking to bolster their tourism industries.
The issue is, how to convince Chinese holidaymakers that the continent is safe, exciting and accessible?
On one hand, it might be an easy sell because as the maturing Chinese traveler looks for experiences beyond the shopping boulevards of Europe, “there’s a growing market for the safari products in East Africa and South Africa,” says Trevor J Ward, hospitality analyst
