Once, long ago, the world was the playground of well-to-do Europeans, with wealthy wanderers jetting out from Monaco or setting sail from Southampton. Later, the baton passed to a new generation of New Worlders, with the bankers of Boston and the commercially-successful Californians bestriding the globe with all the confidence of the nouveau nomads they clearly were. Now, the world has turned once again.
Today, it’s the vacationing Vietnamese, the sojourning South Koreans and, most of all, the high-end holidaying Hongkongers and luxury berth-booking Beijingers that are off to see the world. In 2016 alone, outward-bound mainland Chinese travellers took 136.8 million trips abroad. More than 50 percent of these travel-minded Middle Kingdomers are millennials.
If you think their comparative youth is reflected in a willingness to rough it, you couldn’t be more mistaken. According to the 2017 Chinese Luxury Traveller Report, produced by the Shanghai-based Hurun Research Institute, some 28 percent of all Chinese travellers looking solely for five-star luxury accommodations.
But premium accommodation isn’t the only thing money-is-no-object mainland jetsetters are willing to ever splash out on. According to Nielsen’s 2017 Outbound Chinese Tourism and Consumption Trends Survey, Chinese tourists allocate a whopping 25 percent of their total holiday budget solely to shopping. Accordingly, the combined annual overseas spend of such travellers is around US$300 billion.
With luxury shopping pretty much a staple of every Western capital, Chinese travellers are somewhat spoilt for choice when it comes to selecting the best place to have a Union Pay splurging spree or two. Nevertheless, leaving the allure of the many popular destinations within Asia aside, there are five faraway foreign locales that checked in to be travelling mainlanders’ particular favourites…
Coming in at number five is Germany, the European country that just 73 years ago was pretty much intent on world domination. Now, though, with all such unpleasantness all but forgotten, visiting mainland tourists can explore its many malls and historic treasures, though goose-stepping down certain thoroughfares with a pretend moustache can still bring out the worst in the locals.
Coming in at number four is France. Chinese travellers recent overtook their US counterparts to become the biggest-spending overseas contingent in Paris, the French capital, which is so rightly famed for its galleries, its Eiffel Tower and the ease of access it offers to terrorists of Middle East extraction. If you’re stocking up on your D&G collection while in town, best have a gander at its new Kevlar line. You just never know.
Coming in at number three is the Maldives, a tiny island nation comprising 26 atolls and set within the abiding deep blue splendour of the Indian Ocean. Give its population is 100 percent Islamic and that alcohol, bathing suits and public displays of affection are illegal within its boundaries, it’s perhaps surprising that the resort ranks quite so highly. Maybe they bribed someone.
Definitely less controversially, the US is a shoo-in for the number two slot. Given recent political difficulties, visiting mainlanders are advised to keep the amount of aluminium or steel they bring with them on any America-bound excursion to an absolute minimum, else there could be a bit of a scene at customs.
The number one slot is also a bit of a mystery. Coming so soon after finding that the beer-and-fun-free Maldives is apparently the third best place in the world for holidaying Hangzhouans to head off to, the very probity of the research seems to be brought into question by Australia peremptorily topping the list. With a little bit of a muse, however, this does somewhat land on the understandable side.
For many Chinese travellers, the cultural snobbery of the Great European nations (and Germany) can seem a little off-putting. At the same, the overly-entitled sense of world ownership that can be detected from a typical American from at least 20 yards away can seem equally unwelcoming to a tired Tianjin traveller after 20-plus hours in the air.
Not so those destined to arrive in Australia – the very lack of culture keeps any sense of cultural inferiority wholly at bay, while the fact the country’s territorial ambitions have never strayed beyond taking possession of the nearby Norfolk Island (population three, two of them possums) makes it totally unthreatening, world-conquest wise. They haven’t even overrun New Zealand and that’s there for the taking. Strewth.
Text: Robert Blain
Photos: AFP and Imagine China