An interesting article with video about that topic.
https://www.euronews.com/2019/09/06/tapping-into-china-s-tourism-bonanza
A lot of European destinations have already their own tourist websites in Chinese language. The number of Chinese tourists in Berlin has more than tripled in Berlin in the last ten years. Chinese tourists are also known for their shopping and consumption behavior. AliPay is on the strong rise especially in the luxury shopping stores at tourist sites.
Booming in Frankfurt. Average Chinese visitor spends close to 1000€ here. All dept stores and designer stores have employees that speak Mandarin or Cantonese. Lots of tax-free stores here selling German knives, pots and pans and the drugstores in the city have lines of tourists buying baskets full of cosmetics, baby stuff, and more. Loads of tour buses in the morning and afternoon and then they move on to the Rhein, Rothenburg or Munich.
The VAT lines at the airport are quite long because of this, and the major dept stores have an extra section where they take care of the VAT forms.
I enjoy seeing their excitement and happiness about being here. Must really be a dream come true for the senior citizens who probably thought they would never get to travel outside of their country.
It should be interesting to see how hotels and restaurants adapt (or don't) to Chinese tourists. Chinese are notorious for not venturing to try Western food when they travel. Some whom I know bring lots of instant noodles with them and always look for Chinese restaurants for their meals. I read an article (in Chinese, so the article link won't help you) about a US motel owned by a Chinese-American family who put out, in addition to the usual American motel breakfast spread, Chinese-style porridge and pickled vegetables for their Chinese guests.
What happened next was that the motel got slammed online for this by American travelers who complained in 1 and 2-star reviews that the motel was catering to Asians and that the breakfast area smelled of garlic and other obnoxious odors.
So the owners did away with putting out Chinese breakfast food and instead would tell the Chinese guests quietly to come into the kitchen where they would prepare something just for them in a way that wouldn't affect the breakfast nook.
what a shame that people can't be more open minded
Not just in Europe, either. Our Mall of America (Minnesota) has actively courted this market for awhile; as this article states, "Every year for the last five years, the number of MOA visitors from China have outranked visitors from every other country."
I've noticed a big increase of Chinese tourists at the far outer- suburb (Minneapolis) outlet mall we visit at a couple of times a year as well. Judging from the amount of bags they're loaded down with, they love to shop!
But U.S. visitation numbers also declined a bit last year for multiple reasons (although per forum rules, best not to dive into a discussion about some of those):
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/chinese-tourism-to-u-s-drops-for-the-1st-time-in-15-years
I was very surprised a few weeks ago to see a tour bus dropping off people in a commercial establishment in our new, non touristy town. When we lived in Santa Barbara this was an everyday occurrence year around but where we currently are, near Sacramento not so much. As I was getting my cart for a quick trip to our Costco store a large group of Chinese tourists came rushing in behind me. They were meet by a greeter at the entrance who proceeded to fill them in on the Costco shopping experience. I would have loved to have stuck around on that day to see what kind of purchases they were making and how they were going to get them on to their bus in the parking lot. I’d seen groups being brought by busses to high end shopping places and outlet malls but never Costco.
Bicester Village shopping outlet is supposedly the second most visited place by Chinese citizens in the UK, coming after Buckingham Palace.
When I was in the British Museum, I ran into a young woman who was part of a large tour from China. We were both admiring a gorgeous piece of jade art.
"It's very beautiful," I remarked.
"It belongs to us," she replied delicately.
I'd never thought of it that way before -- I wasn't in a museum, I was in a collection of the spoils of war and colonialism. It would have been as if I was looking at the Liberty Bell in the Imperial War Museum had the Colonists lost the Revolutionary War.
Of all my travel experiences, that one probably opened my eyes the widest to the fact there's a whole other world out there beyond the shores of America.
-- Mike Beebe
RE: Chinese are notorious for not venturing to try Western food when they travel.
The above was not our experience while touring China several years ago. We were some of the few Westerners in an upscale hotel in Kaili, a Guizhou province city not on the usual Western tourist routes. The hotel had an "International" breakfast and a Chinese breakfast room. The difference was the International breakfast room offered both Chinese breakfast items and International (Western including Scandinavian, Japanese etc). The Chinese only breakfast room was practically empty and the International breakfast room filled with Chinese tourist enjoying the International items including Western foods.
A friend of mine is fluent in Mandarin and works at an upscale department store in London. He makes a very comfortable living, and regularly has several sales over £1000 each day.
That Chinese-American owner caved in, basically chickened out to the reviewers of that sort.
Go to Los Angeles, ie, to Little Tokyo, the two big hotels there offer the typical American breakfast as well as a Japanese one consisting of fish (very good salmon) along with other Japanese food items as part of the breakfast buffet.
In Berlin-Charlottenburg there is one very popular Chinese restaurant packed all the time at dinner in the summer located on Kantstraße. It's called "Good Friends"...lots of Germans, other Europeans, locals and tourists, and Chinese tour buses go there.
You're given a tri-lingual menu that contains dishes more tailored to German tastes, (eingedeutscht), should you want these, and dishes that are more authentic to Chinese tastes, if you prefer these. Both choices are offered in this menu.
@Mike Beebe: The British Museum is FILLED with the plunder of UK colonialism in Greece, Iran, and many other countries. These countries are demanding their cultural patrimony back. Consider the Elgin Marbles in the BM. These are the bas relief sculptures from along the Parthenon. For years and years, the Brits claimed that the Greeks could not care for their own cultural patrimony. The Greeks have now built the Acropolis Museum, which has a central wall structure of exactly the dimensions of the Parthenon. Each place on the wall has either the original bas relief, or a sketch of the missing piece in the BM. There are possibly 10% of the original pieces in Greece.
I think that in the next 50 years, much of the BM will be returned to the countries from which pieces were taken. The Rosetta Stone, multiple Assyrian statues, on and on and on.
I would have replied to that Chinese woman asserting that if the same applies to the Rosetta Stone, if the Egyptians should feel likewise or even the French, and how do the Chinese view the Amur River valley and area of Vladivostok?
Viking river cruises, which has long run tour ships in China as well, also runs European river cruises designed for the mainland Chinese tourist. Our English language longship kept crossing paths with them this summer.
We were in Oxford England a couple of years ago - my last visit was in 1972. We stopped at a shop specializing in Alice in Wonderland items, and noted that the place was filled with Chinese tourists. I'm not sure if the Chinese people have a special fondness for the Alice story, or if they simply found it to be an interesting place to stop.
On the same day, we met tourists from Argentina, Bulgaria and Russia. It occurred to me that I never saw tourists from these countries in 1972.
My first Oktoberfest, back just after 9/11 in 2001, I was really tempted to buy lederhosen because the locals looked great.
The temptation waned when I saw a busload of Chinese tourists all decked out in really nice lederhosen and dirndls.
Chinese tourists are also known for their shopping and consumption behavior.
In the New England area, there are "outlet malls" -- home to many designer stores offering discounts on brand new items.
I wandered into Coach one time, on that particular weekend, there were many Asian people in the store buying a lot of wallets, bags of all sizes, sunglasses, etc. The quantity they were buying and the amount they spent sort of surpassed the average traveler or shopper looking to get an exclusive Coach item.
They may have had a very large family back home or the Dad was really spoiling his wife and daughters that were with him. Either way, beautiful gifts. A few thought they might have a store in their home country and perhaps reselling the bags.
They also went into the Michael Kors store in the same outlet strip mall.
