Foreign travel is now a thing in China

BOFIT Viikkokatsaus / BOFIT Weekly Review 2015/09

The Lunar New Year and the Spring Festival have traditionally been the main holidays when Chinese return to their home districts to gather with their families or do some local tourism. Based on early estimates from tourism officials, travelling abroad during the Spring Festival was much more common this year than earlier.

The volume of Chinese tourists has exploded since the early 2000s as middle-class wealth and consumer options have increased. The Chinese now account for nearly a tenth of the world’s tourists. Top tourist destinations for the Chinese are nearby Thailand, Japan and Korea, but also many European cities are popular vacation destinations.

Shopping is one of the biggest drivers of Chinese tourism. They buy electronics from Japan and Korea, and especially brand clothing and luxury goods from Europe. According to Global Blue, a tourism shopping value-added tax refund service provider, Chinese tourists in 2014 (for the seventh year in a row) were the biggest claimers of tax-free refunds. Chinese tax-free purchases, which already account for about a third of global tax-free sales, rose last year by nearly 20 %.

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