COTRI Director Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Georg Arlt quoted in the UK’s Daily Telegraph

COTRI Director Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Georg Arlt has been cited directly in an article in the Daily Telegraph, which rests largely upon COTRI statistics.

Entitled ‘The unstoppable rise of the Chinese traveller – where are they going and what does it mean for overtourism?’, the article explores the continued growth of Chinese outbound travel in the global tourism market, providing a clear analysis of the 145 million trips made by Chinese Mainland citizens in 2017.

Discussing the predicted growth trends in the coming years, the article ties in Prof. Arlt’s examination of the role that the anticipated boom in Chinese traveller numbers will have on the global industry.

Linking directly to an editorial Prof. Arlt published earlier this year in the COTRI Weekly, the article quotes him directly to underline the message that, in spite of their growing numbers, Chinese outbound travellers can be part of the solution for combatting overtourism:

“It is very hard to keep Chinese first-time visitors to Paris from going up on the Eiffel Tower, but as the number of Chinese repeat visitors is growing, these guests arrive with much less fixed ideas what is the ‘must-see’ location and the ‘normal’ time to visit,” Prof. Arlt explains.

“Many destinations represent a white sheet of paper for Chinese visitors, by creating attractions adapted to the needs of the Chinese source market temporal and spatial dispersion is possible.”

Written by Oliver Smith, ‘The unstoppable rise of the Chinese traveller – where are they going and what does it mean for overtourism?’ is available at the following link and appears in the April 11, 2018 Travel section of the telegraph.co.uk website.

Image: Barcelona by Thomas Gartz Source: flickr Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)