China Outbound Tourism in 2009

In 2009, the Chinese outbound tourism market sustained a rapid and sound development to an increasing number of tourist destinations. The number of Chinese mainland residents who traveled to Taiwan grew by leaps and bounds in 2009.

In that year, a total of 47.7 million Chinese traveled overseas, up 4.0% compared to 2008. Among them, 5.5 million went overseas under official assignment, down 4.7% from the previous year, while those who went overseas for personal reasons reached 42.2 million, up 5.2%. The ten top-ranking countries visited by Chinese travelers on the first leg of their tours in numerical order   were Hong Kong, Macao, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, the United States, Russia, Singapore, and Thailand.

The number of Chinese people who traveled overseas as a group organized by travel services was 12.4 million, up 13.2%. Of them, 6.9 million went to foreign countries through the arrangements of travel services, up 13.5%. About 5.2 million traveled to Hong Kong and Macau, up 6.6%. Additionally, 298,200 people toured frontier areas, arranged by travel services, down 30.5%.

Another 9 foreign countries were newly added to Chinese people’s tourist destinations, namely, the Republic of Cape Verde, Guyana, Republic of Montenegro, Republic of Ghana, Ecuador, Dominic, United Arab Emirates, Papua New Guinea as well as Republic of Mali.

About 18.7 million China mainland residents visited Hong Kong, up 6.3% from 2008. The number of China mainland residents traveling to Macau was 15.1 million, a decline of 2.5%. Almost 981 thousand Chinese visited Taiwan, an increase of 253.4%.

Data Source: Ministry of Culture and Tourism of People's Republic of China

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