Chinese Golden Week tourism strong amid Yuan depreciation, turbulence in stock markets

According to travellers and tourism operators, Chinese outbound tourism remains very strong during the Chinese golden week – a seven-day National Day holiday – despite the recent turbulence in the Chinese stock markets and the Yuan depreciation. Since this year’s golden week almost coincides with the Mid-Autumn festival, Chinese tourists who can take three additional days off from work will have a total holiday of 12 days.

Although the more geographically close destinations of Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Bangkok represent the top 3 outbound tourism destinations this year, [tweetable]tourism to long-haul destinations in Europe and America have increased significantly in comparison to last year.[/tweetable]

The indication is that the recent 2 percent depreciation of the Chinese Yuan to the US dollar has had very limited effect on outbound tourism during the golden week. Yan Xin of the leading Chinese tour booking site Ctrip says in an interview with South China Morning Post that “even if the value of yuan decreased by 3 per cent, it would only add 300 yuan to the price of a 10,000-yuan deal, which, to most tourists, is no barrier at all”.

Despite the recent depreciation of the Yuan, it is still a strong currency that has seen its value rise significantly over the last decade against both the US dollar, the Euro, and the Japanese Yen – resulting in Chinese tourists still having much more buying power abroad than they used to have.

COTRI China Outbound Tourism Research Institute provides expert insights into the worldwide developments of China’s outbound tourism market. As Chinese outbound tourists are travelling to a large range of destinations, our publications cover a number of different regions. Important Chinese visitor activities are analysed, and detailed insights are presented.

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Photo: Oliver Mallich, flickr