The impact Chinese travelers have on global travel trends boils down to three elements: inbound, outbound and domestic patterns.
STR's senior director for Asia-Pacific Jesper Palmqvist unpacks the current state of Chinese travel impact on the world on the latest Hotel News Now podcast, and those trends are a little unexpected.
Overall, Chinese outbound travel volume is forecast to be 85% of 2019 levels this year, Palmqvist said, but the profile has changed.
"The question has, and should have, eroded from asking, 'When are they coming back?'" he said. "It's not about that anymore. It's more about who are the Chinese [travelers]? It's not the tour groups."
Chinese tour-group travel is happening, but the current patterns favor more Chinese independent travelers, who spend differently, Palmqvist said.
"It's less of the big tour groups where shopping is a big part of it," he said. "It's more hotels, more [food and beverage], more experience-related travel."
Domestic travel within the region is happening, but Palmqvist said the softer Chinese yuan has resulted in dropping hotel rates and generally lower spend.
On the other hand, "inbound into China is almost more interesting now," he said, citing cheaper flights.
Other topics in the episode include:
- Whether Bali can sustain its current strong hotel performance trajectory into next year.
- India's changing nature as a source market for destinations around Asia.
- Japan's continuing popularity as a destination and whether it can sustain that demand growth.
