China’s Internet travel market expected to grow by 70%

The Chinese aren’t generally known for their snow sports passion. However, with a 70% growth recently projected through a nation wide survey, published online by Mu Xuequan of China View, there’s a certain knock-on effect to be seen in the global winter tourism industry.

China already equates for a large percentage of overseas visitors within the Japanese Ski Resorts. And it seems that booking online is becoming much more widespread.

The value of China’s online travel market is to reach 3.84 billion yuan (519 million U.S. dollars) this year, with a projected growth rate of 70.7 percent, according to a nationwide survey.

The survey showed that China’s online travel services market was worth 2.25 billion (300 million U.S. dollars) in 2007, with an estimated 65 percent expansion for the industry from 2006.

We, at Tactic Group, expect to see this growth affect not only the Japanese ski industry but many other internationally-attractive destinations too. South Korea, as China’s closest skiing destination, will certainly see one of the biggest surges in Chinese visitors. Australia and New Zealand, with their winter season occurring at the opposite time of year to their Northern Hemisphere counterparts, will also see a reasonable increase. Even Europe and North America should see a small growth in Chinese visitors over the coming years.

Of course, all this is very dependent on the level of online ‘cross-culture marketing’ directed towards the Chinese.

This entry was posted by Posted by Keith on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 at 7:23 pm, and is filed under Cross-culture marketing, Tourism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.