We need to wake up and smell the roses, us Westerners are no longer an important group for the Thailand tourism industry – in fact, we are what you would call ‘niche’ – and with good reason.
The Chinese are here in numbers and not only will this continue to grow but they also outspend Europeans per capita by 53% when in Thailand.
There are more Chinese…
The Chinese now account for 57.48% of all tourists in Thailand and what makes this even more staggering is only 8.7% currently have passports (120 million).
According to Jing Travel this could double by 2020 – that means 240 million Chinese able to travel (363% of the UK population (66 million)). They also go on to state that first time Chinese travellers are more likely to travel more close to home to begin with, so places like Vietnam and, you guessed it, Thailand.
..And the Chinese share of the pie will only grow
No wonder Thailand are forecasting tourism to grow from the 38 million now to over 79 million by 2030.
The Chinese Spend More…
Quite often I hear the European retaliation that they would like to see the spend levels per capita of Chinese, suggesting it to be low. This could not be further from the truth as shopping is an important factor for when they go on holiday.
The Chinese expenditure into Thailand is US$15,342,000,000 each year, which is more than any other nation.
The average spend per day for a Chinese tourist in Thailand is US$192 – which is 53% more than the average Europeans US$125 daily spend.
By Dan Cheeseman
