Travelport has recently analyzed the habits of many nations worldwide in terms of booking trips both for leisure and business purposes. The most interesting results involved China.
As China is just beginning to come out of a dark age in terms of its peoples’ possibilities to travel, it is perhaps unsurprising that the Chinese have somewhat different habits than other nations when arranging their holidays and business trips.
According to the findings of a recent survey by Travelport, Chinese people have started to travel to countries they never used to be allowed to visit, mostly because the Chinese government never used to allow its citizens to travel. Another important factor is that the Chinese are so numerous that they present a great marketing opportunity and are the world’s most prominent Internet users. 380 million people use the Internet in China.
Furthermore, according to the survey more Chinese people than anybody else use social networks to arrange their business and leisure trips. The idea of using Twitter or Facebook to arrange trips may seem odd to an Englishman or a German yet is a regular activity for Chinese tourists.
Whereas credit cards are mostly used in Western countries to pay for trips, 46% of Chinese people actually use cash and their credit card purchasing rates are half that of their counterparts in the USA. Just 1% of Chinese people use debit cards when arranging visits abroad.
The pie chart of reasons for traveling from China is different than anywhere else. Very few Chinese tend to venture abroad to visit relatives and a half put their activities down to sightseeing, which is becoming a scarcer reason to travel for Americans and Europeans. The Chinese have also helped to dispel a common myth: that most of all travel budgets go on air costs. In fact, the cost of a flight is now around 30% of the total trip, meaning it is not the main expense at all.