The UK hospitality industry is expected to receive an influx of Chinese tourists this month as their holiday season kicks in.
China’s week-long annual holiday ended on Friday, however, they are still expected to continue to travel outside of their country. Chinese visits to the UK have doubled over the course of the past 5 years. 2009 saw approximately 89,000 visits, whereas 2014 saw 185,000 visits. Furthermore, the seat availability on flights departing China has increased by 16% for October 2015 in comparison to this time last year.
Chinese visitors have also been said to spend a lot more than other foreign tourists – £2,688 each, which is 4x more than the average and tend to stay for 10 nights on average compared to the average of six across all inbound visits.
Sally Balcombe, CEO of VisitBritain said that work was continuing to be done to make Britain ‘the destination of choice’ for Chinese visitors and the aim was to double the current annual expenditure in the UK by Chinese tourists to £1 billion a year within the next five years.
She continued on to say: “China is the world’s largest outbound market and a huge tourism opportunity for Britain. Chinese visitors have very positive perceptions of Britain, they already stay longer here than in our European competitor destinations and are high spenders – every 22 additional Chinese visitors we attract supports an additional job in tourism.
“We are working hard to make sure that Britain is the destination of choice for the rapidly-growing Chinese market, further increasing their desire to travel here through high-profile campaigns in Chine, as part of our GREAT campaign.”
With a growing number of Chinese tourists choosing to visit and spend time in the UK, VisitBritain has created a Chine Welcome programme that gives advice to hospitality and tourism operators that cover how to make their businesses welcoming to them and how to best market themselves.
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