Massive increase in White collar Chinese travelers in 2023

White-collar Chinese travellers are dominating in after COVID era

The Genext Chinese or better known as the millennial born between the 1980s and 2000, are well-educated, rich and tech-savvy. They owe this to the economic reforms in the country, and this generation is reaping the benefits. With more wealth created, disposable incomes have increased, and are spending life in the lap of luxury!

After three years of suspension due to COVID travel limitations in China, a white-collar worker from the southwest Chinese city of Chongqing informed the Global Times that she hopes to take her parents on an international group vacation in February or March. “Group excursions with everything carefully organized and arranged are more convenient since my parents are becoming older,” she remarked.

The Chinese millennial, an estimate puts them at about 300 million are well educated, with about 25% of them attending high school, and universities have white-collar jobs, thanks to the economic boom. The new generation is quality conscious and looking to spend a quality lifestyle similar to that of their counterparts in the developed West.

Influenced by the international culture, these young people are eating healthy, love to dress in style, are tech-savvy, and also love to explore places, learn about cultures, etc. Travelling to places for all these reasons has become a fashionable trend among the new generation of affluent Chinese. According to a report, the Chinese take as many foreign trips as possible in a year. They love to go shopping at international destinations, and travel as tourists to explore the culture and learn about new places.

All this throws open the unexploited Chinese tourism market to global tourism players, and they are keenly observing the changing trends. Recently, the Chinese youth are increasingly showing interest in Korean culture, their products, as depicted in Television shows, pop stars, etc have a great influence on the changing preferences of the Chinese.

Chinese white collars represent the bulk of the Chinese tourists

According to recent research by the travel website Qyer, most Chinese tourists intend to go abroad within a year now that the country’s revised COVID-19 response has loosened travel restrictions.

It was shown that 75.4% of the participants paid attention to outbound tourism information while they were perusing travel advice, indicating that Chinese visitors aspire to international travel. About 38.5 %of the participants desired to go abroad within six months, and 12 % intended to do so for the upcoming Spring Festival holiday. More than half stated they would want to take a 10-day trip abroad i 2023.

With the Chinese economy emerging as the world’s second-largest economy, the Chinese have the highest disposable incomes, and 40% of the global luxury spending is from the Chinese. Of the 40% luxury spending by the Chinese 2/3 of this amount is spent oversees. A CNBC report reveals the spending on luxury items by Chinese in different foreign countries, it states about 25% of the spending happens in the UK, 35% in Italy and 40% of luxury spending by Chinese is in France.

Another interesting feature of Chinese travel and spending habits is that they demand quality, and customized services to suit their specific needs. They prefer staying at luxurious star hotels, branded hotels, and boutique hotels. Well, the new white-collar Chinese are not afraid of costs or spending money, according to a UN global report on tourism spending with a 40% increase year on year the amount spent by Chinese in the year stood at $102 billion making them the world’s highest luxury travellers.

Chinese tour agencies must stay aware of this trend that will quickly become the norm given the rise of the middle class. Travel will be more and more accessible to people with a lower income than before. Nowadays, the Chinese outbound tourism industry is full of niche markets with a lot of potentials. For example, the more culturally oriented travel experience market is still small compared to the group tourism focused on buying luxury goods but this trend is slowly changing.