Reading the mind of the Chinese traveller
Thousands of Australians were among the estimated half a million tourists who visited China for the Olympic Games. But what does Australia need to know about the new wave of outbound tourism from an increasingly affluent China?
An old chinese adage says that to be a learned man you must travel 10,000 kilometres during your lifetime.
'Chinese people believe that knowledge comes from the landscape not just from books,' says Dr Wenbin Guo, a tourism economist from La Trobe's Bendigo campus.
That philosophy augers well for the future of Australia's tourist industry. We are already the preferred destination for Chinese tourists and the La Trobe academic is predicting 500,000 Chinese visitors by 2020.
'Australia has many famous natural landscapes that have just the right image in China,' Dr Guo says. Phillip Island, Uluru, the Great Barrier Reef and the Twelve Apostles are the most famous.
Dr Guo's comments are based on sound statistical methods and surveys of travel agents in China as well as on cultural history.
He began his research into China's outbound tourists ten years ago when few had the means to travel. Annual figures have increased from five to 46 million a year in that period.
Chinese travellers are unlike Western backpackers, he says. 'They want to keep to the track and minimise risks.'
Individual travel is too expensive and most favour small groups which spring from the tradition of travel involving a master and scholars. The aim of these tours was to get far away from the injustice encountered in the everyday world. 'This concept has parallels in the Western pursuit of Utopia,' Dr Guo says.
In Chinese culture, travel poems and paintings are not just portraits that display the topography of real places – they aim to transport the participant through the power of imagination.
Beautiful mountains and rivers, as well as magnificent man-made buildings in cities, were often the subjects of these poems.
'Given the widespread popular exposure to such accounts through the process of formal education, it seems likely that such imaginings continue to influence thinking about Chinese and possibly international destinations,' Dr Guo says. 'The increasing number of people who now possess the means to travel is likely to shape the future development of domestic travel.'
Modern Chinese tourists are not interested in shopping nor in high-rise buildings, Dr Guo says. They are after a unique experience. A famous landscape is their favourite destination. Most eat in local Chinese restaurants but they like to have a few new food experiences.
He lists novelty, safe location and a clean environment as other factors that help sell the image of a destination in China.
'The depiction of a harmonious relationship between people and nature was often a centrepiece in their ancient travel,' Dr Guo says. 'Australia's intact environments offer that.'