Boracay Among Top 20 Destinations for Chinese Tourists

Boracay Island, the famous resort island in Aklan, Philippines, ranked as the 16th of the top 20 most popular destinations for Chinese travellers in July and August 2013, according to TripAdvisor.

The report said the number of Chinese tourists visiting Boracay increased 360 percent year-on-year in July and August.

China exceeded the US and Germany to become the world’s largest source market for outbound tourism by expenditure in 2012.

According to the China Tourism Academy, the Chinese outbound travel market is estimated to reach 94 million trips in 2013, up 15 percent year-on-year. These travellers are estimated to spend US$117.6 billion on their trips, up 20 percent year-on-year.

Lily Cheng, Managing Director, TripAdvisor China, said, “While Hong Kong and Macau continue to draw tens of millions of mainland tourists a year given their unique roles as duty-free shopping havens supported by easy transport links, family-friendly attractions and onward air routes to other international destinations, we are definitely seeing a shift in the market and mainland travellers have started to look further afield into destinations like Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea and beyond.”

Lily Cheng said “This new generation of Chinese outbound travellers is making their own decisions about where to go, where to stay and what to do by doing their own research online, going beyond the old stereotype of big buses of group tourists. These travellers are savvy, sophisticated and do make an effort to understand and respect the local culture by doing a lot of online research before their trip. As they explore outside of mainland China, they are deliberately seeking out websites that have an established international presence to find more deals and more content.”

Based on unique visitors recorded in July and August 2013, on daodao.com, the top 20 most popular destinations are as follows (comparing year-on-year growth for July and August 2012 versus July and August 2013):

Within the Top 20 destinations, Kyoto (Japan), Kota Kinabalu (Malaysia), Hanoi (Vietnam), Jeju Island (South Korea) exhibited the highest year-on-year growth at high triple digits. Outside of the Top 20, destinations on the rise with over 4 times year-on-year growth from DaoDao users include Siem Reap (Cambodia), Pattaya (Thailand), Sabah (Malaysia) and Berlin (Germany).