UK Hospitality Industry Benefits from Increasing Number of Chinese Tourists

1. UK HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY TO EXPECT INFLUX OF CHINESE TOURISTS The influx of tourists from china to the UK has exceedingly increased over the last five years, from 89,000 to 185,000 in 2014 and data from Capstats.com reveals that seat availability on flights from china are down 16% for October 2015 when compared to the same month in 2014. Also, Chinese tourists do spend a lot more than other foreign tourists. Each visitor is likely to pay £2,688 or more which is four times more than the average price and they also for ten nights on average instead of the usual six on average of all inbound visits. VisitBritain CEO Sally Balcombe stated that, work is still in progress to make Britain ‘the “destination of choice” for Chinese tourists and the goal was to double the current annual expenditure in the UK by Chinese guests to £1 billion each year over the next five years. Her actual statement was; “china is the world’s largest outbound market and a huge tourism opportunity for Britain. Tourists from china have a positive perception of Britain, they stay longer here than in our European rivals destinations and are also high spenders. Every twenty-two Chinese tourist we attract leads to an extra employment in tourism. “We are working hard to make sure that Britain is the destination of choice for the fast-developing Chinese market, further increasing their desire to travel here through high-profile campaigns in China as part of our GREAT campaign.” China Welcome With more Chinese tourists choosing to spend their holidays in the UK, VisitBritain has launched a China Welcome program that offers advice to tourism and hospitality industry operators on how to make their businesses welcoming and how it can be properly marketed. Earlier this year, the hotel group IHG also launched its ‘China ready’ Zhou Dao program to ensure all their hotels prepared to welcome Chinese guests. Stephen McCall, CEO of IHG, Europe stated that, if businesses plan to attract people from china, they have an obligation to know what their likes and dislikes are. “Notuntil recently, china was a closed country and they didn’t have the same exposure when compared to other cultures, so they do have specific likes and dislikes,” he asserted. Currently, IHG ensures a mandarin speaker is at all 80 of its ‘China ready’ hotels across the globe. The hotels have special welcome packs for Chinese tourists, provide specific food and beverage options and also accept UnionPay. “UnionPay is the bank card China have access to, so if your business does not accept it, how can you receive payment from them?,” asserted McCall who believes IHG has to lead the way in being ‘China ready’. ”It is particularly important to IHG that we are welcoming,” he said. “We are a major player in china. Whenever people travel, they recognize our brand and then come to stay with us, so we have to lead the way.” Even with the surge in the number of Chinese tourists coming to the UK, McCall said the figure could be higher if the visa process was a lot simpler.