Inside Out | Get ready for the huge Chinese tourism boom
China’s international tourists spend around US$161bn a year on travel, and as this number grows, so an increasing number of economies worldwide will remain eager to capture their share
As we queued to climb onto the little tourist bus readying to take us down into Hobbiton, the secret and mystical valley home of Bilbo Baggins and his fellow hobbits, there was already a sense of foreboding. And no, it did not come from the glowering rain clouds hovering close overhead.
Among our damp and intrepid group of sentimentalists setting out to rediscover the quaint childhood memories stirred by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and given life by New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson in the heart of New Zealand’s tranquil countryside close to Rotorua, was a surprisingly rambunctious crowd: six mainland Chinese mums herding seven Chinese kids between the ages of one and six. I do not think Gandalf would have been amused.
Certainly few of the tour group members were in any way amused as the kids in turn bellowed, argued, cried and generally trampled underfoot the carefully manicured pathways that wove their way through Hobbiton up to Bilbo Baggin’s Bag End. To my surprise, none defied the warning on Bilbo’s gate: “no admittance, except on party business”. But our tour guide was in clear distress as her attempts to weave some of Tolkien’s magic were drowned out as the children ran amok. Other Chinese in the group were clearly embarrassed.
Is this the shape of “tourism future”, not just in mythical places like Hobbiton in New Zealand, but worldwide, as unprecedented millions of mainland China’s newly empowered middle class families prepare to discover the globe? How prescient was Tolkien to note, as Bilbo was about to begin his adventure across Middle Earth, to the Lonely Mountain and the home of Smaug the dragon: “It is a dangerous business going out of your front door.”
As in other areas, China’s laws of big numbers are transforming the world of tourism, and not just in New Zealand. The Germany-based China Outbound Research Institute calculates that more than 150 million mainland Chinese travellers ventured overseas last year – the largest number from any nation. And this is predicted to grow beyond 200 million annually in the next five years. Admittedly, 68 million of the present total were travelling to Hong Kong and Taiwan, but that still meant 83 million travelled more intrepidly – outnumbering the 83 million German overseas travellers, and the 68 million from the US.