Hotels.com has released its annual Chinese International Travel Monitor (CITM), which identifies millennials as the key emerging trend.
The importance of millennials, or Generation Y, or those aged 18-35, is a constant across all travel verticals. Suppliers need to be aware that Chinese millennials have more akin to their global peers than older Chinese travellers.
The overwhelming majority of Chinese international travel will be booked in China, and the growth in the use of mobile over the past twelve months is staggering.
Half planned and booked travel using apps in the past year, compared with only 17% during the previous period. That is a big jump in just one year, according to the survey.
Trends about digital use at home become relevant for suppliers outside of China looking to sell to travellers while on the road. Almost every Chinese traveller (94%) brings a smartphones with them; 61% said they also bring a digital or video camera; more than half (53%) have a tablet and one in four will bring a lap-top.
Suppliers outside China will need to ensure that their site can take Chinese payments.
As usual with studies such as this, there are some interesting asides buried within the report. For example 15% of Chinese millennials took an international cruise during the past twelve months, compared with 12% of the overall sample.
Elsewhere, 9% of the sample aged between 31 -35 go abroad for beauty treatments or cosmetic surgery, compared with 4% overall.
While these percentages are not massive, they are still significant when there are more than 100 million international travellers out of a population of 1.4 billion.
Click here to visit a dedicated micro-site from where the full report can be downloaded.
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