Tourism outpaces luxury goods

Nomadic tents dot the grasslands of Xinjiang's Ili Kazak autonomous prefecture.[Photo provided to China Daily]

China's domestic travel industry is exceeding overall national growth and spending on extravagant brand purchases. Yang Feiyue and Erik Nilsson report.

China's tourism industry's advance has surpassed the overall economy's, as more Chinese are opting to spend on travel rather than pricier luxury goods.

Chinese took more than 2 billion domestic trips in the first six months of this year, up 9.9 percent over the same period of 2014, China National Tourism Administration data show.

They made 3.6 billion trips in 2014.

"We expect the figure to reach 3.95 billion (in 2015)," says Zhang Youyin, a researcher with the Beijing-based think-tank, the Regional Tourism Planning and Development Institute.

Domestic travelers spent 1.65 trillion yuan ($266 billion) in the first half this year, a 14.5 percent increase over the same period of last year.

Family and graduation trips are promising prospects. So are self-driving excursions, Zhang says.

"Travelers are spending more rationally on travel and are less blindly on luxury travel," he says.

Metropolises like Beijing and Shanghai are siring a younger generation of middle-class consumers, who are breaking away from group tours.

The industry's driving demographic has become independent travelers under 35, says China's biggest online travel agency, Ctrip.

They're propelling an upwelling in online reservations because they use the latest technology to plan and book trips.