Published on : Thursday, November 15, 2018
The number of Chinese people taking trips abroad will more than double to 259 million in 2030 from 97.5 million this year, said the report, unveiled at the World Travel Market 2018 in London. That number will far outweigh the US in second place with 159 million outbound trips, and Germany with 138.6 million.
Currently the US leads the pack with an estimated 115.17 million trips this year, followed closely by Germany with 110. 52 million trips.
Euromonitor said that the growth in the household incomes of people on the Chinese mainland would lead to a higher appetite for travel.
The outbound departures were defined in the report, called “megatrends shaping the future of travel”, as foreign trips that last more than 24 hours. Bob McKercher, a professor at the school of hotel and tourism management at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, said part of the reason China will top the table is that Hong Kong and Macau are counted as international travel.
Between January and September, there are around 46.68 million foreign tourists visited Hong Kong, of which 78 per cent, or 36.63 million, were from the mainland. That represented growth of 12.7 per cent among Chinese visitors, versus just 0.8 per cent growth for visitors from elsewhere.
Transport projects such as the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link, and the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge were expected to further boost travel between the mainland and the two Special Administrative Regions.
Mainland Chinese immigration authorities issued 133 million passports in 2017 and recorded more than 46 millions visits to Hong Kong and Macau by mainlanders, official data showed.
Tags: euromonitor, hong kong, Macau