Number of Chinese tourists in Britain increased by almost 40%

In the first nine months of 2015, the number of Chinese tourists in Britain increased by 37%, and their average spending increased by 4% than in 2014, which turned out be a slowdown.

This lumbering increase in the spending of Chinese tourists is a challenge for luxury retailers like Burberry, which heavily rely on their Asian customers.

One reason for this regression of spending is the relatively high value of the pound against the euro, thus driving more tourists to spend their money on the European continent, where they can get better prices. Despite the recent stock market crash in China and the economic slowdown, China still remains as one of the fastest growing outbound tourism market worldwide and is an important source of tourism for the UK.

Comparing with tourists from other countries, Chinese are characterized by their high spending. According to VisitBritain, Chinese tourists spend averagely GBP 2,688 on their journey in Britain and already cover about 25% of the total tourist spending in Britain.

As Chinese citizens are having high income due to the rapid economic development, more people are now able to afford to travel abroad. According to the estimations of the World Tourism Organization, 100 million Chinese will travel abroad this year, and European countries like France, Italy, Switzerland and Germany are all among the 10 most popular travel destination among Chinese tourists. Although Britain offer a great variety of cultural natural tourism resources, it is lagging behind some other European countries when it comes to attracting Chinese tourists. The main reason for that is the visa. Unlike many other European countries which are members of the Schengen compact, Britain requires from its Chinese tourists a separate visa. This stops many Chinese tourists who are visiting Europe. For them, going to Britain would be very inconvenient as they have to apply another visa for the country. In order to facilitate the visa process for Chinese tourists, Britain has just released a two-year visa which allows multiple entries for Chinese tourists before the visa expires. The British government hopes to attract more Chinese tourists with this new visa policy, especially given that the Chinese New Year is coming and a huge wave of Chinese tourists will be on the way by then.

Source: the guardian

Photo: flickr