“According to Mintel’s Chinese Spending Habits – China, April 2015 report, holidays account for 11% of total consumer expenditure, which is the third most important spending after housing and finance and in-home food. This shows the importance of holidays to Chinese consumers.
Chinese are both travelling more often and spending more during each holiday. Holidays are very important occasions for Chinese people to switch-off from a heavy work load and relax. Thus they pay more attention to better catering and accommodation to indulge themselves while on holiday.
As disposable income continues to grow, Chinese consumers are also likely to seek richer, new experiences in addition to just comfort. Their focus is shifting away from the traditional activities of site-seeing and photo-taking, with more emphasis on local experiences and gaining greater understanding of local culture and heritage during their trips.”
In this report, Mintel answers the following key questions:
What kind of activities are Chinese tourists most interested in and what kind of information is most important when they are searching for a holiday?
How can holiday marketers, such as tourist boards, hotels, and travel agencies – as well as advertising companies working for them – better reach Chinese tourists?
What should tourists boards/travel agencies abroad emphasise when marketing to Chinese tourists?
Definition
The report discusses domestic, outbound, and overseas holidays taken by Chinese tourists.
A domestic holiday refers to trips to destinations in mainland China
An outbound holiday refers to trips to destinations outside mainland China, ie to destinations including Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and foreign countries.
An overseas holiday refers to trips to destinations outside Greater China, ie destinations in foreign countries.
The holiday definitions used in the terminology of this report are as follows:
A holiday is a form of tourism, as defined by the tourist in response to Mintel’s survey. A holiday can be distinguished from other travel such as business trips and medical treatments.
An independent holiday is a type of holiday where the traveller organises and books transport and accommodation from separate sources.
A semi-independent holiday is a type of holiday where people book packaged travel and accommodation from a travel provider (eg travel agency, outdoor clubs, online travel agency) but can organise their itinerary themselves.
A group tour is used to describe a tour involving a group sharing one tourist bus, licensed driver, and a tour guide, or an all-inclusive holiday.
Methodology
This is a marketing intelligence report published by Mintel. The consumer research exclusively commissioned for this report was conducted by a Chinese licensed market survey agent (see Research Methodology China for more information).
For the purposes of this report, Mintel commissioned a quantitative research survey carried out online to explore consumer attitudes towards holidays and travel.
Fieldwork was conducted in January 2015, in four tier one cities and six tier two and three cities of 3,000 internet users aged 20-49. The tier one cities are Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Chengdu. The tier two and three cities are Chongqing, Fuzhou, Harbin, Changzhou, Jiaxing and Liaocheng.
Unless otherwise stated, photographs in this report were taken by Mintel analysts.
