As to the classic Chinese text ascribed to Confucius, the
first lines in the first chapter of the Analects (Lunyu) are as follows-the Master said: “To learn something and then to put it into practice at the right time: is this not a joy? To have friends coming from afar: is this not a delight?” It is the chief Chine Written over 2,000 years back. The two rhetorical questions have taken on a new significance for the global tourism industry: The increasing number of Chinese outbound tourists travelling to all corners of the world and the money that they spend at the several tourist destinations and tourism service providers, but the essential learning about their specific expectations and behavior and even more the requirement to put this learning into practice at the right time, as the sage reminds us, has not always been so joyful for many stakeholders involved.
When I first visited the People’s Republic of China in
1978, as a member of a German students group arriving from my hometown Berlin
via Transsiberian Railway in Beijing, we had to stay in the only hotel open for
western foreigners at that time, aptly called the Qianmen. Then, our group of
25 members was welcomed with 25 bottles of beer to celebrate our arrival. These
bottles were quickly emptied and as I was the only person in the group having
some knowledge about Chinese, I was given the task of calling the reception to
ask for more beer. To which the receptionist had a clear answer: “Comrade, the
German working class had to work hard to save the money and send you to China
so that you can learn about the revolution in China and to take home this
knowledge in support of the struggle in Germany. For this, you need a clear
mind during your trip. No more beer!”
It was not the way that we had taken the purpose of our
trip, but it took many years for me to understand that the reason behind all
this revolutionary talk was simply the fact that there was no more beer in the
hotel allocated to our group and even to acquire the single crate of Qingdao
Pijiu had probably been very difficult for our hosts.
In the 35 years which passed since our visit to China,
now the country has grown from a poor country into one of the chief economic
forces in the world and not only did it turn into the third-most visited
international tourism destination in the world, but in 2012, the country also
achieved the status of the biggest international tourism source market, leaving
behind Germany and the USA with, according to Chinese official sources, more
than 83 million border crossings and more than $100 billion spent on the road.
In this past three-and-a-half decades, I have been
working as a tour operator bringing Europeans to China in the 1980s, and
Chinese to Europe in the 1990s, before crossing over into academics and
becoming a full-time professor for international tourism management. Almost ten
years ago, I initiated the COTRI China Outbound Tourism Research Institute,
based in Germany and China. In this blog, I will be delighted to share my
insights into the still very lively development of the Chinese outbound
tourism, with an occasionally added look at both domestic and inbound tourism
in China itself.
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