What Role Will Chinese Outbound Tourism Play in Post-Crisis Travel?
Photo Credit: Chinese travelers walking in the pedestrian zone of Ginza, Tokyo. Flickr / Toshihiro Gamo
Skift Take
For a decade, China's outbound market has been the driving force of an unflinchingly optimistic global travel industry. As a new decade starts — with much of that optimism extinguished — will China's growth remain as reliable?
In the last decade, a dominant narrative emerged about travel's inexorable upward slope: It is, in great part, thanks to the growth of the Chinese outbound travel market.
As Wolfgang Georg Arlt, CEO of the Chinese Outbound Tourism Research Institute, put it, "you used to have an ice cube machine on every floor in a good hotel for the Americans. Now you have a hot water [kettle]."
Indeed that narrative has, for the most part, been true. The Chinese outbound market became the largest in the world in 2013, according to Skift research. In a pre-Covid-19 analysis, Skift research forecasted that China will send 286 million trips abroad by 2029. That a growing number of affluent and aspirational Chinese would continue to fuel travel's upward trend seemed not just a safe bet, but obvious.
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But as the travel industry stares down its new, unimaginable decade ahead, it faces a reality
