Why are Chinese tourists said to have brought “real gold” to BRICS countries?

September 5th: With the deepening of BRICS cooperation, tourism exchanges between China and other BRICS countries have become increasingly popular. The surge in Chinese tourists has brought real money to these countries.

During the 2017 BRICS Business Forum, Ctrip CEO Sun Jie said in an interview with a reporter from China News Service that among many areas of cooperation, tourism is becoming a highlight and has effectively promoted the culture of the BRICS countries. Exchanges and personnel exchanges have injected new impetus into the friendly development between countries.

She said that tourism has made the connections between BRICS countries closer and closer, and promoted non-governmental economic and cultural exchanges. Through the analysis of Ctrip’s 300 million member order data, we can find that the BRICS countries are gradually becoming popular destinations for Chinese people to travel abroad.

Among them, as for Russia, from January to June 2017, the number of Chinese tourists to Russia increased by 40% year-on-year. Ctrip predicts that the number of Chinese citizens visiting Russia will reach 1.5 million in 2017, bringing more than 20 billion yuan in revenue to Russia. At the same time, the number of mutual visits between China and Russia continues to hit new highs.

As for South Africa, the country’s Tourism Bureau previously stated that South Africa received more than 110,000 Chinese tourists in fiscal year 2016, an increase of 38% compared with the same period last year. Sun Jie said that judging from Ctrip’s group tour and independent travel data in the first half of 2017, the number of Chinese tourists to South Africa increased by 90% year-on-year.

In Brazil, Ctrip said that in the first half of 2017, the number of Chinese tourists to Brazil doubled. At the same time, the per capita expenditure on traveling to South America exceeded 55,000 yuan, which was the average expenditure of Chinese tourists on outbound travel. Nearly 10 times.

An important reason why the BRICS countries are sought after by Chinese tourists is the increasingly close ties between the BRICS countries and the targeted cooperation around tourism.

In 2015 and 2016, China and India held each other's "Tourism Years", which promoted the development of India's local tourism industry through cooperation in the tourism industry.

Ctrip data shows that the cooperation mechanism of the "Year of Tourism" has obvious effects. In the first half of 2016, Indian hotel bookings on Ctrip’s platform increased by 150% year-on-year. The per capita travel price of tourists in India is between 9,000 yuan and 12,000 yuan, and their spending power is obvious.

The rising popularity of Chinese tourists visiting South Africa is also due to favorable policies. Since the second half of 2015, South Africa has relaxed visa regulations and has focused on the Chinese market. Targeting the Chinese market, the South African Tourism Bureau has launched the "Travel South Africa, Ultimate Experience" tourism project, and has opened visa centers in 9 cities including Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou to facilitate Chinese tourists to apply for visas.

Multiple benefits such as visas and flights are also the reasons why a large number of Chinese tourists enter Russia. Sun Jie said that in 2017, the number of Chinese tourists visiting Russia under the group visa-free scheme is expected to reach 1 million. The exit procedures are convenient and you can leave at once, which has become a major selling point of Russian tourism.

Chinese tourists’ outbound travel not only brings real money to the destination country, but also enhances people-to-people understanding. Sun Jie said that tourism is the simplest and most primitive means of people-to-people diplomacy, which can build bridges between China and BRICS countries and even countries around the world, and increase interactions between countries, companies and companies, and individuals.

From a global perspective, the tourism resources of the BRICS countries have yet to be developed. Compared with the number of tourists, the proportion of tourist arrivals is still small compared with the population. There is a very broad space for development of tourism cooperation. Promoting tourism exchanges among BRICS countries will surely drive employment, trade, investment and consumption.