Tourism Ireland, who promotes the island overseas, is looking to increase the number of Chinese tourists coming to the Emerald Isle. The Chinese tourism market has excellent potential for Ireland. Since achieving ‘Approved Destination Status’, Tourism Island has been working hard to capture the Chinese market with the launch of a website and new brochures produced in both Mandarin and Cantonese. In addition a number of hosted familiarisation trips have taken place.

Increasing visitor numbers is highly lucrative for Irish tourism as Chinese visitors are the largest per capita shoppers of any source country  with an average outbound Chinese traveller spending Euro€4,445, (UK￡3,560) per visit.

Why is China so important for Ireland? China’s population of over 1.3 billion combined with its steadily growing economy means it can have a real effect on the development and marketing of tourism destinations worldwide. A record 70 million Chinese travelled overseas in 2011 and that figure is only increasing offering huge potential. China now outranks Japan for outbound tourists.

Chinese tourists like to shop (90%), dine out (81%), sightsee (47%), visit historical places (40%), visit theme parks (32%), and gamble (23%). All of these are available in Ireland.  By 2020, the World Tourism Organisation predicts China will be the world’s top outbound tourism market with 100 million tourists. Chinese outbound travellers used to be based mainly in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, but as time goes on more and more 2nd tier city citizens are adding to the international outbound travel figures. China’s younger citizens are eager to see the world and want adventure experiences and are more adventurous in their choice of destination. At the other end of the spectrum, the senior sector ranges starts from the age of 55 as in China woman retire early at 55 and 60 for men. This sector has a good amount of disposable income, have plenty of leisure time are too becoming more adventurous in their destination choice.

Attracting tourism from China is a good business decision, especially with other markets around the world declining or struggling at present. Tourism Ireland is making sure it is at the top of the choice of international destinations list for Chinese travellers.

Related News in Chinese:
爱尔兰将瞄准中国出境游市场