The revelation was recently made by popular Chinese travel booking platform Ctrip, which listed the most popular countries for Chinese tourists.

Singapore and South Korea were named as the second and third-most popular spots, while last year’s favored Chinese travel hot spot Japan came in fourth.

Rounding out the top ten are Malaysia, the USA, Australia, Vietnam, Canada, and the Philippines.

Ctrip also said that Chinese visa applications to Pakistan increased by a remarkable 37 times, while it doubled for Malaysia. Even though it ranked in third place, Chinese visa applications to South Korea rose by 76 percent. Additionally, Ctrip said multiple entry visas are becoming more popular among Chinese travelers.

Thailand attracted 7.9 million Chinese visitors last year who spent an average 47,000 Baht per trip.

In another Ctrip report released on May 31, Hong Kong was named as the top destination for individual Chinese tourists last year.

Seoul, South Korea and Phuket, Thailand came in second and third place, respectively.

In 2015, 120 million Chinese outbound tourists spent a total of $104.5 billion.

The post Chinese Tourists are Loving Thailand as Japan Loses its Lustre appeared first on The Nanfang.

The robbers remain at large, and a police investigation is ongoing.

Reuters reports that Chinese, Japanese, and Korean tourists are routinely targeted by thieves in France because it is believed they carry large amounts of cash and luxury goods.

In May 2016, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo traveled to Beijing to assure Chinese tourists that Paris was taking all necessary measures to ensure their safety. In January 2016, five youths suspected in 23 robberies targeting Chinese women were arrested in Paris.

In response to an increasing number of crimes committed against Chinese tourists, ten Chinese police officers were deployed to Paris in 2014. However, Chinese tourists have continually been targeted by thieves.

Despite their reputation as world-leaders in the market, the beginning of this year saw a sharp 24 percent decline in the number of luxury goods purchased by Chinese tourists overseas, reported Global Blue.

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According to Caissa Touristic, the exclusive travel provider for the Rio Olympics in China, thousands of travel packages have been purchased in China already. As well, travel by Chinese to neighboring countries like Argentina and Chile have increased around the Olympic Games.

During the 2014 World Cup, some 5,000 Chinese tourists traveled to Brazil. That year, Brazil received 100,000 visitors from China.

Despite their growing numbers, Chinese do not currently have visa-free entry to Brazil. Unlike the citizens of the USA, Canada, Australia, and Japan, citizens from China are urged to apply for visas early in advance. On top of that, Brazil is a difficult destination for Chinese travelers due to long flights that tend to be on the expensive side.  Air travel between China and Brazil may take up to 30 hours and travel packages may cost between RMB 400,000 ($63,000) and 500,000.

Recent news about the Rio Olympics have focused upon threats and dangers to visitors. Problems have included health risks like the Zika virus, rampant crime, and unpaid police and doctors as part of a broken welfare system. Things are so bad that even Brazillian soccer great Rivaldo warned tourists to stay away from his country out of concern for their own safety. “Things are getting uglier here every day,” Rivaldo wrote. “I advise everyone with plans to visit Brazil for the Olympics in Rio — to stay home. You’ll be putting your life at risk here.”

However, Chinese tourist simply will not be deterred from reaching their destinations. Liu Xing, 28, last visited Brazil for the 2014 World Cup and thinks the country has gotten a bad rap from the news. “I think some of the reports are totally rumors,” he told the Global Times. “The major cities are very clean, and the sanitation services are good, only tourists going to the Amazon area should get inoculated against yellow fever.”

From his previous experience, Liu said there will be a considerable police presence that will keep tourists like him safe. “I have a hunch that this trip will be the most memorable one in my whole life,” he said.

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At a meeting last week of  Japan’s “Ministerial Council on the Promotion of Japan as a Tourism-Oriented Country”, a plan was adopted to extend multi-entry visas to Japan from five years to ten years. According to the Council, special consideration will given to business people, artists and academics.

The application process for single-entry visas for Chinese students will also be simplified, making it easier for the 75 universities under the direct control of China’s Ministry of Education to enter Japan.

Initially announced last month on Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, the reforms are part of a larger Japanese plan to raise the annual number of tourists to 40 million by the year 2020.

Japan has become a top destination for Chinese tourists. Tourism to the country doubled last year to five million, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization. Forty percent of all tourist dollars are spent by Chinese visitors.

Not everyone in Japan is excited at the prospect of more Chinese tourists. A Japanese television program called for “Chinese-only zones” after Chinese tourists were seen rampaging through the country’s famous cherry blossom trees. Other incidents involving Chinese tourists in Japan include fighting at airports, sneaking into a women’s only area at a spa, and a honeymooning couple who assaulted a Japanese store clerk after they opened a food package in a store.

Japan now stands alongside the US, Canada, and Israel, all of whom have signed deals providing Chinese tourists with ten year multiple-entry visas, and vice versa.

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Expecting another large influx of tourists this past Labor Day holiday, urban patrol officers were dispatched to the entrances to Nanluoguxiang. Unfortunately, tourists weren’t deterred by the officers’ presence. Despite the new regulations, police allowed tour groups to enter the Nanluoguxiang hutong, but only on the condition they split up into smaller groups.

As a result, Nanluoguxiang received more than 70,000 visitors on the Saturday, an amount that increased to 90,000 on Sunday. The eight meter-wide hutong usually receives 30,000 visitors on weekdays, and 50,000 on weekends.

According to the China National Tourism Agency, the small hutong is only designed to accommodate 17,000 people at any one time.

On April 25, local authorities had banned tour groups from the Nanluoguxiang hutong to reduce the risk to the historic buildings and the impact on local residents.

Having allowed the new regulation to be subverted, Dongcheng authorities reported that the crowd situation in Nanluoguxiang went well. Crowds were said to have flowed smoothly, and authorities reported of no complaints about security and service during the weekend.

The post Beijing’s Nanluoguxiang Overwhelmed by Tourists appeared first on The Nanfang.

Following sluggish sales in January and February, March saw a 24 percent drop in the sale of luxury goods by Chinese tourists overseas. The decline is largely attributed to same goods becoming widely available domestically, leading Chinese shoppers to buy closer to home.

Europe in particular has been hit hard, suffering a year-on-year decline of 34 percent in the luxury goods market. According to Global Blue, the decline of Chinese luxury purchases in Europe is not due to an unfortunate year but rather, part of  “the new normal”.

Meanwhile, luxury good sales in China haven’t fared much better. According to global market research firm, Bain & Company, sales dropped two percent to 113 billion yuan ($17.39 billion) last year. The drop in sales did not go unnoticed by retailers. 83 percent of luxury brands shut down retail outlets in China last year, according to Beijing-based iResearch Consulting Group. Among others, Louis Vuitton closed three stores in China last year, Hugo Boss closed 20, Gucci five, and Prada two.

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With 115,000 Chinese visiting in 2015, the country now ranks as the 6th highest source of tourists in Egypt. The Egyptian Tourism Authority hopes to raise that number to 200,000 this year by offering wealthy tourists cruise trips on the Nile, leisure events along the Red Sea, self-drive tours in the desert, and golf tours. In anticipation of the increased numbers, weekly flights between Cairo, Egypt and Guangzhou and Beijing will be increased this year.

Meanwhile, Israel has seen a 40 percent year-on-year increase of Chinese tourists. Israel anticipates 68,000 Chinese will travel to the country this year, and 100,000 annually by 2017. Both China and Israel have agreed to allow citizens from each country to be issued ten-year multiple-entry visas. This would be Israel’s first such visa of this length.

According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, Chinese tourists spent $215 billion on outbound travel in 2015, an increase of 53 percent over the previous year.

A survey conducted by Hotel.com of 3,000 Chinese tourists found that Australia ranked as the most popular destination last year, followed by Japan, France, Hong Kong, and South Korea.

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Due in large part to the influx of Chinese tourists, the economy of the nearby town of Sea Lake has experienced a reversal of fortune. According to a Xinhua report, the motel rooms of the town of 600 people are routinely booked solid, helping the local economy at a time when farmers have been hit hard by a two-year drought.

The lack of rain is part of the reason Chinese tourists are drawn to the shallow salt lake. With no clouds or light pollution, visitors to Lake Tyrrell have the opportunity to glimpse the spectacular night sky.

Alice Lee from Hong Kong said the scenery of Sea Lake is unlike anywhere else in the world. “I see the beauty of the scenes and the different changes in the skies, the clouds and over the sun,” said Lee. “That’s why we want to go.”

For a time elapsed video that shows just how spectacular the night sky is over Lake Tyrrell, click here.

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Xinhua published photos showing Chinese tourists posing in in the square that is mostly free of people, insisting “The number of tourists in Lhasa began to mount as the temperature rised [sic].” The Xinhua report did not provide any specific details.

Other media announcements have been made at an awkward time.

During the recent “two sessions”, deputy director of the Tibet tourism development commission Hong Wei said government regulations will be reformed in order to make travel to the region more accessible. “Tibet will be more open to domestic and foreign tourists in the next five years,” said Hong.

Hong’s remarks come at a time when non-Chinese tourists and visitors have been banned from traveling to Tibet. As has been the annual tradition since 2008 when anti-Beijing riots in Lhasa broke out, China forbids Tibet travel access to any foreign visitors during the month of March. This is a politically-sensitive period in Tibet that culminates in Tibet Uprising Day, which takes place on March 10, a day that marks Tibetan opposition to Beijing rule.

Any foreign traveler wishing to enter Tibet must first procure a Tibet travel permit, a special document not needed for other regions in China. As China Daily reports, this extra requirement is based on Tibet’s unique ethnic traditions, cultural heritage, reception capacity and ecological protection needs.

But even as foreign tourists are currently not allowed in, tourism in Tibet is flourishing from the huge numbers of Chinese tourists that flock there.

Mei Zhang, the founder of travel agency Wild China, says Tibet has become a “holy grail” to Chinese tourists. “It’s the spirituality, the exotic culture and also the stunning landscape,” explained Mei.

And the numbers of tourists are equally stunning. According to the Tibet Autonomous Region Tourism Development Committee, some 17.5 million tourists visited Tibet in the first nine months of 2015, an increase of 36 percent over the same period last year. Specifics detailing the difference between foreign and domestic tourists were not included in the report.

Robbie Barnett, a Tibet scholar at Columbia University, said that a distinct difference between Chinese and foreign tourists is where their money ends up.

Local Tibetans tend to benefit more from foreign tourists “since they want to be guided by Tibetans, want their money to go to Tibetans, and tend to prefer low-impact, sustainable forms of tourism,” said Barnett, while “Chinese businesses appear to benefit most from mass tourism, which mainly involves Chinese tourists.”

But while Chinese tourism continues to rise in domestic and outbound trips, foreign tourists from abroad are becoming less inclined to come to China. Last year’s 8.2 million foreign tourists marked a decline of 680,000, or about 8 percent, from the year prior.

All the same, even without foreign tourists, China is banking heavily on tourism to develop Tibet. Local Tibet authorities have predicted tourist revenue will double in the next five years, accounting for over 40 percent of local economic output.

Already, Lhasa’s tourism revenue has more than tripled in the past five years to an estimated 15.49 billion yuan ($2.35 billion) in 2015. The local authorities say the revenue will double by 2020, bringing some 150,000 jobs in the city.

Development in Tibet has already resulted in Lhasa’s first-ever KFC, the construction of a second railway line to be completed by 2030, and plans for a ski resort.

The post China Uses Photo of Empty Square to Show Tibet’s Popularity With Tourists appeared first on The Nanfang.

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:

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