The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Greece set for comeback as tourist destination Posted: 08 Mar 2013 06:35 AM PST
The desire for a beach holiday closer to home for cost-conscious consumers in Europe is helping to revive tourism demand in the country, battling recession and a debt crisis. Doerte Nordbeck from market research group GfK showed in a presentation at the ITB travel fair this week that bookings to Greece from Britain, Germany and the Netherlands for this summer were up 10 per cent. Tourism income for Greece, its chief money spinner, fell by 4.6 per cent to €9.89 billion (RM40 billion) from January-November in 2012, according to the country's central bank. Arrivals from Germany, Greece's biggest tourism market, dropped by almost a fifth, partly on fears about a backlash on German tourists caused by Berlin's tough austerity demands on Athens. Alltours, Germany's No. 4 tour operator, said bookings for holidays in Greece were up 30 per cent on the year by March 5, boding well for the country where tourism accounts for around one-fifth of output and one in five jobs. "The tourism industry in Greece has overcome the crisis of the last two years and is now back on top form," said Willi Verhuven, chief executive of German tour operator Alltours. Verhuven said the company was in particular seeing a surge in bookings from repeat customers who had ditched Greece in favour of other resorts. Europe's largest tour operator TUI Travel is also seeing a comeback for Greece, with bookings at the group's German unit up 4 per cent. Bookings from the UK are performing strongly, a spokesman said. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who opened the ITB fair this year, called on trade fair visitors to take holidays in ailing euro zone states such as Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy to help create jobs. "I also wish that European countries which are famous for tourism get good custom — I name Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy — all countries in which growth is really necessary at the moment and where we have to make an effort to finally get people back into work," she said. Europe weakens Globally, the tourism industry — worth an estimated US$1.15 trillion (RM3.57 trillion) last year — is expected to grow by between 3 and 4 per cent in 2013, driven by up to 6 per cent higher visitor numbers in emerging markets, according to latest estimates from the UN World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO). It sees growth in Europe, the world's No. 1 tourist destination, slowing to 2 per cent or holding steady at 3 per cent as the region's debt and financial crisis rumbles on. But Germany's federal tourist association BTW forecasts growth of just 1 to 2 per cent this year owing to the uncertain economic environment. "If the weak economy begins to seriously affect the employment market and domestic demand then this will also impact on the tourism industry," group president Michael Frenzel said. Germany's national tourist board also sounded a note of caution. "The European financial and debt crisis is still a long way from being overcome yet," said Klaus Laepple, president of the tourist board. Emerging markets such as China and Russia would continue to be the main driver of growth for international tourism, Rolf Freitag, head of tourism consultancy IPK, said. Asia Pacific was seen recording the biggest increase in visitor numbers this year, with growth of between 5 and 6 per cent, followed by Africa, where arrivals were expected to increase by between 4 and 6 per cent, UNWTO said. Last year, emerging market countries attracted 4.1 per cent more tourists while their mature counterparts catered for 3.6 per cent more travellers, according to UNTWO data. — Reuters |
| Europe searches for charms to lure Chinese tourists Posted: 08 Mar 2013 05:54 AM PST
According to the China Tourism Academy, some 200 million Chinese could be travelling abroad annually by 2020, up from 82 million in 2012. While the overriding image of the Chinese tourist in Europe is one of busloads of shoppers heading for the luxury boutiques in Paris and Milan, Europe must not get carried away by these stereotypes, and think of other ways to lure them on a long-haul flight, experts at the ITB travel fair in Berlin said. "We're been thinking not like Chinese, but like Europeans," Eduardo Santander, the head of the European Travel Commission, which promotes tourism to the continent, told Reuters. "Europe is still the number 1 tourism destination so far but that may dramatically change in 10 to 15 years if we don't change some patterns." For Chinese tourists, the sun and beaches of the Mediterranean that were so popular with Brits, Germans and Russians held little appeal, said TUI Travel CEO Peter Long. Instead they want to visit places that hold historical relevance for their own culture. They enjoyed classical music and, wanting to escape the smog back home, they appreciated a clear blue sky, Santander said, citing a study the group had done among Chinese web users. Interesting places for Chinese travellers looking to explore Communist history include the German city of Trier, the birthplace of Karl Marx, and Montargis, a little-known town 97km south of Paris. Chinese history lovers are keen to visit Montargis because it was the home of Deng Xiaoping during the 1920s and said to be the place where a group of Chinese students first proposed the idea of a communist party for China. Furthermore, if you see groups of Chinese people admiring a willow tree at King's College, Cambridge, it is because it is mentioned in a much-loved modern poem "On Leaving Cambridge", by Xu Zhimo. Spanish dreams With the euro zone crisis and austerity measures crimping travel budgets in Europe, it has become all the more urgent for countries such as Spain and Greece to look outside their traditional British, Dutch and German source markets for income. In Europe demand for cross-border travel is due to rise by only 2 per cent in 2013, compared with 7 per cent for Asia. In Spain, where tourism accounts for 11 per cent of gross domestic product, 57.7 million tourists visited in 2012. But arrivals from Britain, the country's biggest source market with close to a quarter of the total number of visitors, were flat. "The British and the Germans are not getting richer... and the times of flying for £10 from London to Spain are ending," Wolfgang Georg Arlt of Chinese tourism research institute COTRI said. Spain has therefore set a target of reaching 1 million Chinese visitors a year by 2020, up from 177,100 in 2012, a goal described by Arlt as a tall order. Shao Qiwei, chairman of China's National Tourism Administration, said Spain must also overcome the language barrier to attract more Chinese tourists and adapt dishes to their tastes. "We are hoping for more Chinese tour guides in museums and tourist sites and to see Chinese television in Spanish hotels," Shao said at a UNWTO event in Madrid. Cultural barrier It's not easy to adapt though and the ETC's Santander said his organisation would try to ensure all parts of the tourism chain, from taxi drivers to tour guides and luxury hotel owners were educated on Chinese travel wishes and customs. Spain has even already put on some bullfights where the bull was not killed at the end, to appease Chinese tourists who do not like blood. Tour company Marly Camino, which offers high-end walking packages on the Way of St. James, a pilgrimage route to a cathedral in northern Spain, has seen an increase in enquiries from Asian tourists from Singapore and the Philippines, but said there was only one official Chinese-speaking tour guide in the region. "There's the cultural barrier too, the etiquette is a little different. If we're going to be receiving that kind of client we want to be in the loop with how you treat that kind of client and what they expect," said co-director Samantha Sacchi Muci. Marly Camino therefore plans to create packages for Chinese agencies to directly market to tourists to side-step the language barrier, saying it needs such agencies as an intermediary to help crack the market. Tourism watchers at the ITB in Berlin said Europe's beach resorts could follow the example of the Maldives, among the top five most popular destinations for Chinese tourists. The islands made a conscious effort to attract arrivals from sun-wary China with island-hopping tours, night fishing and snorkelling when arrivals from Europe collapsed after the deadly Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. "Forty years ago, when Germans and Brits first started coming to Spain and Greece, they were a strange race too," said Martin Buck, who helps organise the ITB, the world's largest travel and tourism fair. "But Spain and Greece used the chance to make those visitors into an important pillar of their economies. Why shouldn't they do the same with the Chinese?" — Reuters |
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