Friday, June 15, 2018
As portion of the ongoing 2018 EU-China Tourism Year, the European Travel Commission (ETC) is narrowly checking the travel trends of Chinese tourists in the expectation of maximizing the potential of China as an incoming source market.
Utilizing air reservation data from ForwardKeys, the ETC discovered that travel from China to Europe is about to grow. The first quarter of this year witnessed a 9.5-percent growth in Chinese arrival number to the continent in comparison to the Q1 last year, and forward bookings for the second quarter are, as now it stands, up by 7.9 percent in comparison to the last year. For the rest of the world, Q1 arrivals were 6.9 percent and Q2 forward bookings at 6.2 percent, showing that Europe is increasing its overall market share.
For Chinese tourists, the top European destinations are Germany, up by 7.9 per cent over last year, and France, up by 11.4 percent. Also, Turkey, Ukraine and Hungary have shown huge growth. Bookings to Russia over the period of the World Cup finals are simultaneously noticeably higher than last year – this week, bookings are an impressive 173-per-cent up.
“We firmly believe that monitoring Chinese air travel trends will help the European tourism industry better understand Chinese visitors and enable it to offer them the best experiences,” said Eduardo Santander, Executive Director of the ETC. “Doing so will reinforce ETC’s and the European Commission’s efforts to secure Europe’s position as the [top] tourism destination worldwide.”
