The Tourism Index Report Predicts That Mainland China Will Lead The Asia Pacific Outbound Tourism Market With A Two Digit Growth Rate.

MasterCard International has recently released the latest tourism index forecast: in the first half of 2008, the number of outbound tourists from mainland China will reach 21 million 600 thousand, and the outbound tourism market will lead the whole Asia Pacific market by 12.4% year-on-year growth.

Despite uncertainties in global financial markets, the outbound tourism market in the Asia Pacific region will continue to grow in the first half of 2008.

In the previous report of MasterCard International, China's outbound tourism market had slipped and its growth rate dropped to 7.5%, but this report shows that the market has shown signs of recovery, and more people are expected to conduct personal and business outbound tourism in 2008.

In terms of overseas tourism in the Asia Pacific region, it is estimated that there will be 79 million 500 thousand outbound tourism in the next 6 months, of which about 1 / 4 are from mainland China.

Dr. Wang Yuehun, chief economist of Asia Pacific region, MasterCard International, said that despite the turmoil in the world financial market, the growth of tourist numbers remained stable, which should be related to the expected growth in the income and employment rate in the first half of the year.

The great driving force for the growth of outbound tourism in mainland China comes from the growth of the production class.

In large cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the number of middle class families is increasing rapidly, and the number is expected to increase from 35 million in 2006 to 100 million in 2016.

In addition, with the increase in the choice of cheap tourism, tourists from mainland China form an influential ethnic group and will continue to affect the trend and trend of tourism in the 2008 and the future.

Although global warming and its negative effects have attracted wide attention, 72.6% of respondents said their personal and business travel plans will not be affected; however, 1 / 5 of respondents said they would reduce personal and business travel because of their worries about the environment, and only 7% said they would increase their personal and business travel plans in the face of negative effects of global warming on the environment.

Dr Wang Yuehun further pointed out: "we can interpret the reaction of respondents in different ways.

It may be that the respondents do not understand the relationship between tourism and its negative impact on the environment, so they do not care, or they are just not affected by this because there are no alternative means of pportation to reduce environmental pollution.

It is reported that other markets in the Asia Pacific region, which are expected to grow year by year, include Australia (12% growth), South Korea (10.8% growth), Malaysia (6.8% growth), New Zealand (6.8% growth) and Philippines (5.9% growth).

Tourism is still a priority for personal tourism.

According to the survey, the number of tourists using cash and international credit cards accounted for 79.3% and 58.2% respectively, indicating that cash and credit cards are still the main means of payment for outbound tourists.

The most important concern for consumers is safety (58.5%), which is the same as last year's half year and last year.

Other key issues that consumers worry about when they travel are: Passport loss (32.1%) and language barrier (26.5%).

Sightseeing (57.1%) remained the preferred activity for tourists while shopping (49.6%) and entertainment (42.1%).

Costumes (55.2%) are the most popular shopping items, followed by souvenirs, artworks, antiques (54.6%), food (32.9%) and luxury goods, jewelry, and branded goods (24.8%).

Business travelers in the Asia Pacific region especially love to stay in the international four star hotels (32.7%), followed by the mid priced three star hotels (25%) and the international five star hotels (21.9%).

In the past 12 months, travel agencies (43.6%), network (38.7%), and family members and colleagues have been speaking from mouth to mouth (37.2%), which continues to be the main source of information for personal travel destinations.

Respondents from mainland China, Hongkong, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam said they preferred travel schedules.

As far as the Asia Pacific region is concerned, business travellers prefer to travel poorly through internal travel departments (42.5%).

More than 1 / 4 of respondents indicated that they preferred to arrange travel through travel agencies, while 31.6% of respondents preferred arranging travel arrangements for themselves, especially in Australia, Japan and New Zealand.

The Asia Pacific region is the first choice for leisure business tourism.

Over the past 12 months, 87.9% of business travelers indicated that the Asia Pacific region visited most frequently business trips, followed by North America (15.1%) and Europe (9.1%).

Mainland China (31.6%), Hongkong, China (17.1%), Singapore (15.5%) and Japan (15.5%) still rank the top 4 destinations for business travellers in the Asia Pacific region.

Business travel in Taiwan, China, showed a significant downward trend, while only 7.3% of respondents said they had conducted overseas business travel in the past 1 years.

39.5% business travellers say the demand for tourism has increased over the past 1 years.

24.9% of business travelers indicated a slight decrease in tourism demand, while 45.7% of respondents said they were flat.

79.9% of the respondents in the Asia Pacific region said that the Asia Pacific region would continue to be the preferred destination for leisure travel, higher than the proportion of respondents who chose Europe (32.7%) while North American respondents were 25%.

Japan and Australia remain the preferred destinations for leisure tourists in the Asia Pacific region, with 24.3% and 22.3% of respondents favoured Japan and Australia.

In the Asia Pacific region, 36.5% of respondents said that they had conducted overseas leisure tourism in the past 12 months, while Singapore (72.4%), Hongkong (64.5%) and Thailand (55.3%) continued to maintain the top 3 position of outbound leisure travel.

The MasterCard tourism index report surveys the middle income groups in 13 markets of Australia, mainland China, Hongkong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, China Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

The respondents included consumers over the age of 18, regardless of gender, mainly from middle and high income groups.