Australia must offer China tourists more

The Australian travel industry must adapt to meet the coming boom in the outbound market from China, with analysts forecasting 100 million Chinese travellers by 2020, a senior travel industry executive says.

Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) chief executive officer Martin Craigs says Australia must be "export ready" for a boom in the arrival of tourists from China in the coming years.

"It's a global issue because it's so huge," Mr Craigs said in an interview with AAP.

Of the 100 million outbound mainland Chinese tourists predicted by PATA, half are expected to visit Hong Kong and Macau, "but that still leaves the odd million a week going somewhere else", Mr Craigs said.

He said the Chinese are "tourists who are high net worth and spending a great deal when they are on holiday".

For instance, high-end British department store Selfridges now employs 10 Mandarin-speaking staff as their Chinese customers spend an average of STG1110 ($A1638).

"So if you are a retailer, it makes sense to provide people who can welcome those visitors," Mr Craigs said.

Australian travel operators need to step up to ensure they receive the maximum benefit from the China market.

Tourism Australia data for 2011 showed arrivals from China represented the fastest growing market segment and was No.3 in total arrivals, behind only New Zealand and the United Kingdom from total arrivals to Australia of 5.9 million.

Arrivals from China gained by almost 20 per cent to 542,000 from 453,800 a year earlier, excluding arrivals from Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China.

'Export ready to China' - again a part is a language issue, of how you prepare local providers of tourism experiences and I'm not just talking about hotels," Mr Craigs said.

"I'm talking about tours - I'm talking about all the interfacing - services that a visiting Chinese tourist would like.

"How do you make sure that they are properly trained, briefed and ready to offer something that's going to delight the visitor and encourage them to recommend the destination so there's continuity of business," he said.

A challenge is adapting to the needs of the Chinese visitors who are looking for different experiences compared with European visitors.

"They also generally travel for shorter times and they seemingly have more proactive holidays.

"So the concept of going to go and get a bit of sun and take a week off at the beach isn't what the typical Chinese tourist does. They plan hour by hour," Mr Craigs said.

He said Australian tourism providers had to accommodate the inbound Chinese market, the way they did in the 1980s to attract tourists from Japan.

Source - msn.co.nz