Global travel distributor GTA, which focuses on the fully independent travel (FIT) business shared insights on the latest travel trends for Chinese travellers during the Golden Week holiday. Based on year-on-year comparison of room nights booked and earned revenue, Hong Kong and Singapore took the top two positions. Phuket came in third, and was the top beach destination, where room bookings doubled from 2014. The other popular beach destinations in Thailand, Koh Samui and Krabi, also saw strong room bookings this Golden Week holiday. Exotic beach locations, which saw new market opportunities from Chinese tourists, include Mexico’s Cancun, Fiji Islands, Negombo in Sri Lanka, Mauritius, and Koh Lanta and Koh Racha in Thailand.
Daryl Lee, regional vice president of sales and marketing for Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, GTA said, “Despite initial concerns of China outbound tourism being affected by the weak economic situation and devaluated yuan, GTA’s average sales revenue and volume has almost doubled from last year, with outstanding growths in some new destinations, demonstrating that Chinese travellers are continuing to travel abroad, many seeking exotic beach holidays, or choosing to venture further during their Golden Week holiday.”
Destinations in Japan showed the largest growth for Chinese tourism revenue from 2014 where Tokyo, Osaka, and Okinawa all saw a huge increase in room bookings. Auckland saw a jump in room bookings ten times more than 2014, while Melbourne, the top Australian city visited, together with Sydney, Cairns and Perth all had room bookings triple in size. America’s top five destinations were Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York, Chicago and San Francisco whereas London, Paris, Rome, Florence, Milan and Madrid were the top European cities visited. Denmark and Sweden also saw strong performance this year, with both countries tripling in room nights booked.
Joy Huang, country manager for China, GTA said, “The Chinese outbound travel market for the FIT is a burgeoning business segment, where it is all about choice, speed, and transactions– so travel agencies, resellers and e-commerce travel portals are seeking well set-up global aggregators with the widest range of products that can allow them to have access to real-time price and inventory search.”
Huang added, “GTA’s robust IT infrastructure includes offerings such as APIs that are user-friendly, and allowing our partners access to travel content via XML interface for integration into their own reservation system or website. Along with our strong relationships with various partners like airlines and accommodation providers, GTA’s strength lies in our team’s ability to package the right hotels, services and experiences at the best price possible, ensuring the tremendous growth of bookings in some destinations and doubling overall sales transactions and revenue this year.”