China fuels travel boom

BANGKOK TMB Bank’s think-tank unit, TMB Analytics, says Chinese tourists will continue to be a major source tourism for the next 10 years.

The bank report said China was the top market for Thailand, last year, and that will continue to expand. Last year, the market generated THB47,000 per head on average, a 1.5 times higher than the past five years.

“This market will continue to expand in the next 10 years…according to Goldman Sachs report by 2025, outbound travel is estimated to grow from a current of 120 million to 220 million trips…most of them will be young travellers, graduates from universities, who have medium range income and use the internet to search for tourism information.”

The bank’s think-tank unit estimates Chinese travellers travel to Thailand could increase to 25 million visits from the current 8 million due to the country’s strong popularity base.

“Chinese tourists particularly new generation will play a more important role for Thailand’s tourism for both number and expenditure…the country should prepare readiness for young travellers.”

According to the Market Research Report on Chinese Outbound Tourist (City) Consumption, 75% of Chinese travellers use social networks of which 44% are Chinese-based websites.

“Thai tourism operators should create websites to promote tourist attractions in Chinese language to tap to the market,” the unit suggested.

70% of Chinese travellers also prefer to travel to natural destinations while 50% love food the research suggested.

“Thailand destinations are ready to welcome more travellers ,however,  we need to have in place measures to protect and preserve attractions… impose strict penalties for those who violate laws related to environmental conservation and maintain value-for-money pricing.”

The bank report stressed that Thailand should increase security.

“State authorities have to provide security, while the private sector and local people should help to closely monitor and inform the authorities of potential security lapses.”

Last year, Thailand attracted 7.9 million Chinese travellers increasing 71.14% from 4.6 million visits in 2014, according to Ministry of Tourism and Sports data.

TMB Analytics is the in-house research group of the TMB bank.

sourced:ttrweekly.com