Chinese tourists flee the heat of summer… in Africa

A lot of people think it’s awfully hot in Africa right now. But when we arrived in Kenya, what a shock for us! Not only was it not hot at all, but it was even cool. Going to Africa to escape the heat of summer is nothing like a « galéjade ».

Yang Fan, originally from Guangxi, and four friends decided to go abroad this summer, not forgetting of course to give news of their trip to their circle of friends on Wechat.

Since this summer, most parts of China have triggered heat wave warnings, with maximum temperatures in some areas sometimes exceeding 40 degrees Celsius in some places. For Chinese tourists unable to withstand such high temperatures, only one solution: go abroad to escape the summer heat.

China’s Tourism Research Institute and Ctrip, China’s largest online travel agency and largest provider of foreign travel services, recently jointly published a research report based on big data, entitled « Summer Travel Forecast Report 2018 », showing that summer heat has become the main reason for Chinese tourists to travel abroad in summer.
Off-season tourism is particularly popular, and Africa has become a real « surprise outsider » for Chinese tourists in summer.

Other Chinese tourists with limited financial resources have chosen to stay in the country, going to Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia or other places in China with lower summer temperatures, to enjoy fresh air.

This year, the number of Chinese tourists leaving for Africa during the summer was double that of previous years.

According to the « Annual Report on the Development of Chinese Tourism Abroad 2018 » published on 27 June by the Chinese Academy of Tourism, over the next five years, the Chinese tourism market abroad is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of about 5%; by 2020, 157 million Chinese tourists are expected to leave their country each year to travel.

Economic growth is the main factor in the increase in the number of Chinese tourists abroad. According to Guo Xiangmin, who has worked in the Hunan tourism industry for a long time, from the point of view of consumer behaviour, Chinese tourists prefer above all those destinations that allow them to escape the heat, but also the cold.