BANGKOK: Fear of a downturn in tourist arrivals to Southeast Asia due to the combined effects of terrorism and lethal health hazards such as bird flu seems to be unfounded. And the hordes of Chinese travelling from mainland China to neighbouring countries seem to bear testimony to that fact.
The weekly flights from the Asian giant to Thailand are being singled out by travel experts as just one clue to this emerging face on the region's tourist map. This summer alone there were 88 flights a week from 23 Chinese cities to Thailand.
"This is phenomenal compared to how infinitesimal it was a decade ago," Imtiaz Muqbil, executive editor of 'Travel Impact Newswire,' told IPS. "That is the most number of cities from one country feeding the travel industry."
And these Chinese travellers are changing the face of tourism in places like Thailand, where the service industry now is beginning to cater to Oriental tastes - rather than the common fare in satisfying usual visitors from Europe and the United States.
The standard breakfast buffets dished out at hotels both in Thailand and else where across the region illustrates this growing Chinese presence. "More hotels in Asia are serving congee (a Chinese favourite rice porridge) for breakfast," John Koldowski, managing director of the strategic intelligence centre at the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), told a press conference here on Wednesday.
The operators of beach resorts are also becoming familiar with the way Chinese holidaymakers prefer the arrangements of beds in rooms - not facing the ocean and near the window, he added.
PATA, a Bangkok-based non-profit organisation that serves the Asia-Pacific tourism industry, credited Chinese tourism for helping this region achieve "phenomenal growth" during this year.
Between January and October, the Asia-Pacific region had recorded 171.3 million arrivals, which is a nearly 30 per cent increase when set against the same period in 2003, which saw 134 million arrivals.
Of that, Chinese travellers have contributed a significant share, according to PATA. This year, the Chinese have made 15.7 million visits to countries in the region as against 9.02 million visits made during all of 2003, states a PATA study on travel and tourism in the region released this week. In 2002, the association recorded 8.3 million outbound journeys from the country to the region.
The places that stand to gain are the Maldives, Nepal, Hong Kong, Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand. And PATA expects this trend to get better, with countries like Australia due to see over one million Chinese tourists by 2006, from the 450,000 in 2002 and Hong Kong to see visits from China hit nearly five million by 2006, from the 2.7 million in 2002.
It also forecasts that Chinese travellers will dominate the Thai market by 2006, with over one million visits, edging to second place visitors from Britain, expected to be 947,795.
The profile of the Chinese tourist is also changing from the image that was dominant five years ago - the low-budget traveller who came on 'zero cost' tours. "The Chinese market has become more sophisticated now because of greater familiarity with the region and increasing knowledge of English," says Muqbil, of the travel newswire. "Some prefer to travel as individuals, not in groups."-Dawn/The Inter Press News Service.
