More Chinese than every before are traveling outside the country. The number of outbound Chinese tourists hit 120 million last year, up from just 10.5 million in 2000.
According to an infographic published in the China Daily, outbound tourism really started to takeoff in 2010. Since then, the country has seen an average annual increase between 13 and 15 million tourists.
The numbers however are somewhat misleading. For example, in 2014, 60 percent of the 107 million Chinese tourists that went “overseas” actually went to China’s special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau and the self-governed island of Taiwan.
One thing that is abundantly clear, however, is that when Chinese travel, they’re not shy about spending money. According to the infographic, 54 percent of Chinese tourists are willing to spend up to 20 percent of their annual salary on travel; 15 percent claim they are happy to spend over 30 percent.
This is welcome news to popular tourist destinations such as South Korea and Australia. The 6.1 million Chinese tourists that traveled to South Korea last year contributed $22 billion to the local economy, accounting for 2.6 percent of the country’s GDP. Meanwhile, the one million Chinese tourists that went to Australia spent $5.4 billion.
Here’s the entire infographic for you to peruse: