Will China Growth Continue in 2018? One clue to answering this question lies in a report given by Laurens van den Oever, chief marketing officer of ForwardKeys, ,who was speaking at the World Bridge Tourism conference in London, said: “The Chinese dragon is breathing more hotly than ever. Bookings for outbound travel during Chinese New Year, in February 2018, are currently 40 percent ahead of where they were at the same time last year.” Looking at a broader period, from the beginning of November until the end of February, bookings are also strongly ahead. The growth story has been running for a number of years and the long-term trend shows no indication of slowing. According to the Chinese National Tourism Administration (CNTA), outbound travel has grown 270 percent since 2008 and it is forecast to reach 200 million departures by 2020. In the same period, traffic to the USA has increased from 493,000 visitors in 2008 to 3,964,000 in 2018, according to the most recent forecast of the U.S. National Travel and Tourism Office—a more than eight-fold increase.
Ctrip China’s Only OTA? Not Yet. A July 2016 article posted on ChinaMoneyNetwork said “Ctrip is now the absolute monopolistic force in online travel in China. One anonymous analyst jokingly describes it as holding a 100 percent market share.” But not yet. Third-quarter resuts showed that China’s number one OTA posted substantial gains, with net revenue growing by 42 percent year-on-year, to $1.197 billion (7.9 billion yuan). Gross margin was up 82 percent compared to Q3 2016, up from 82 percent in Q2 2017. However, according to an item in Jing Travel, “Ctrip faces potentially fierce competition from Tencent-backed Meituan-Dianping. To make matters worse, Ctrip shareholder Priceline has also invested substantially in Meituan-Dianping. Ctrip executives have declined to comment on these developments, but all indications are that Ctrip is in for increased domestic and foreign competition.”
Where do Wealthy Chinese Want to Live Abroad? According to a recently released study by the Hurun Report, the U.S once again leads the list of destinations for Chinese high-net worth individuals (HNWI) looking to move abroad. Canada came in second and the UK ranks No. 3.
The Hurun Report interviewed 304 individuals with net worths ranging from $1.5 million to $30 million to produce these findings, which were released in its report: Immigration and the Chinese HNWI 2017. The report only considered countries that had investment immigration policies.