Air4casts research reveals rise of the young, independent female Chinese traveller

ASIA PACIFIC. Almost 60% of China’s 115 million outbound tourists who stayed in the Asia Pacific region last year were women, and analyst Air4casts has researched where they travelled to.

Hong Kong remained the biggest destination for mainland Chinese women last year by some distance, with nearly 27 million female Chinese travellers crossing over from the mainland, Air4casts said. Females outnumbered males on a 60/40 basis, but this was down on 2016 when the percentage of female Chinese tourists to Hong Kong peaked at 63%.

Source: Air4casts
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There are several reasons for the year-on-year decline. Air4casts said Japan was a “hugely attractive” destination for the dedicated female shopping tourist last year. Underlying political tensions between the mainland and Hong Kong also had a slight impact, while the analyst noted that a trip to Hong Kong “is no longer regarded as anything special”. It said online platforms like CTrip make booking more exotic trips easy “and booking them is what young, female Chinese travellers are doing in their droves”.

In South Korea last year the share of Chinese female visitors dropped from 64% in 2016 to 57.5%, but the figures were impacted by the THAAD dispute between China and South Korea. Air4casts noted that package tours to places such as Jeju had been especially popular with groups of young Chinese women, and these ground to a halt because of the dispute.

Air4casts noted an improvement in overall Chinese visitor numbers to South Korea in the first quarter of 2018, but the decline in female tourists continued (to a 56.4% share – the lowest ratio since 2012).

European travel

The female to male Chinese visitor ratio in Europe has increased steadily over the past five years, Air4casts said.

Source: Air4casts
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The analyst noted that data from European governments is rarely collected on a strict headcount basis, and instead there is a reliance on face-to-face interviews to determine visitor profiles.

Taking the available studies from major European countries into account, Air4casts said 56% of Chinese visitors to Europe were women last year, up from 53% in 2016. Over 40% were in the 18-34 age bracket and they increasingly travel independently, making their bookings online. CTrip is the most used bookings vehicle, particularly via its mobile channel.

Another trend noted by the analyst was that in the under-25 age bracket, the proportion of independent female travellers topped 80%.

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