Chinese tourists flocking to European and Asian capitals in record numbers this summer will be spending less on shopping and more on dining and sightseeing as overseas travel becomes more mainstream and the lure of foreign prices diminishes.
Retailers across the world have come to rely on Chinese tourists but the proportion citing shopping as their main travel motivation plunged to one-third this year from more than two-thirds in 2016, according to an annual survey by booking site Hotels.com and Ipsos.
“For the first time in history, shopping is no longer the prime reason for [Chinese] international travel,” said Abhiram Chowdhry, Asia-Pacific vice-president for Hotels.com. “The cliché of Chinese travellers only being shoppers is reducing. It seems like they want more experiential travel.”