Tag Archives: Chinese travellers

On the sidelines of the HSMAI ME ROC ME Commercial Strategy conference, it was shared that Dubai welcomed 450,000 Chinese travellers between January to September 2023, in an exclusive interview with TravelTV Middle East with Hoor Al Khaja Senior Vice President International Operations, Dubai Economy and Tourism. She shared that China once again has returned within the top 5 source market to Dubai. She reiterated the various strategies implemented to attract this important market over the past year as the travellers started to explore Dubai once again, adding it to their bucket list destinations. Al Khaja mentioned, “China has been one of the key source markets for Dubai prior to the pandemic, it was the fourth major source market. It was one of the markets which took a longer time to comeback. We have seen Dubai as one of the bucket list markets for Chinese wanting to travel. If we look at January to September 2023, we have welcomed over 450,000 Chinese visitors so we are well on our way to achieving figures away beyond 2019. We have been conducting many special programmes with our trade partners. We hosted trade and tech partners from China so that we can regain the visitor numbers as before.”

ForwardKeys in their latest report shared that the UAE, Hong Kong and Macao have already surpassed the travel levels seen in 2019. It further states that the current outlook for travel on this year’s peak travel time, which is 29th September, has already reached 84% of the pre-pandemic level. Another key trend and observation ForwardKeys shared is that 37% of travellers plan to stay in their destinations for 6-8 nights, representing a 3-percentage-point increase compared to 2019. According to Nancy Dai, the China Market Analyst at ForwardKeys, “Chinese travellers tend to book more last minute. The air ticketing data also show that there has been an increase in bookings made by solo travellers and couples, something for tour operators, hoteliers, and retailers to keep in mind this Golden Week. For young travellers, personalized options that meet their needs are becoming even more popular.”

Efficient air connectivity between the UAE and China witnessed over one million travellers from China in 2019. Post pandemic as the region awaits the return of Chinese travellers, “many Chinese now look for new destinations, they can include Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia etc.” shared Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Georg Arlt, CEO China Outbound Tourism Research Institute and CEO Meaningful Tourism Center  with TBN at a recent interview. He further reiterated, “after three long years, China’s borders opened up again in early 2023. Business travellers and students started to go abroad immediately, leisure tourists had to renew their passports and in many cases are currently waiting for the processing of their visa application. Not more than half of the air routes from and to China have been re-established and air ticket prices are only slowly falling. As a result, in the first half of 2023, China’s outbound travel restarted slower than expected: Less than 25 million Chinese crossed the border, compared to 90 million in the first half of 2019.  Fortunately, all surveys and forward booking numbers show that the 100 million Chinese citizens affluent enough to travel long distance and the 200 million Chinese who can afford a trip within the region are eager and willing to spend their travel budgets as soon as it becomes possible again. In 2024 China will be again the No. 1 international tourism source market in the world. However, the needs and expectations as well as travel motivations and behaviour changed profoundly during the pandemic, with shopping, package tours and sightseeing losing out to activities, authentic experiences, local culture and gastronomy, special interest tours and the discovery of new destinations.”

Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (Dubai Tourism) hosted its inaugural Dubai China Conference on September 19-20 at Atlantis The Palm, Dubai. The two-day event, which welcomed over 900 attendees, featured integrated workshops and informative guest speakers offering valuable insights from both Chinese and local industry experts. With panel discussions strongly attended throughout the event, guests were invited to deep dive into Dubai’s China-readiness strategy, along with  engaging into presentations led by industry partners. Breakout periods were also built into the two-day schedule to allow industry players to share knowledge during networking opportunities alongside partners such as Huawei, Ctrip and Tencent. There was also a series of engaging workshops hosted by Mafwengo, Fliggy and Alipay enabling attendees to meet the teams for discussing further potential collaborations, as well as Meituan and DaZhongDianPing which delved into the digital cooperation trends in Dubai. With exponential growth in overnight visitors from China, the event offered a clear indication of the market’s rising prominence as one of Dubai’s fastest growing source markets, after closing the first eight months of 2018 with a record 578,000 visitors – a growth of nine per cent over the same period in 2017. While demand from Chinese travellers is increasing at a quicker rate than capacity, visitation growth is supported by a 9.5 per cent increase in air capacity over the last five years, and increasingly competitive ticket pricing. Furthermore, the percentage of those on China-Dubai flights who stay in Dubai has increased by 29.2 per cent highlighting the increase in demand for elongated stopovers for Chinese tourists.