Asia Travel Trends in Focus

China, Indonesia, Thailand and Macau were just four of the destinations scrutinised by our Asia travel trends team in early 2018.

Are Tourists Still Betting on Macau?

China’s casino resort enclave of Macau may witness changing fortunes despite 5.4% arrivals growth in 2017. Investors and tourists are eyeing new opportunities in nearby Hengqin and tropical Hainan Island, which could challenge Macau’s status as China’s glitziest getaway. Check-in Asia’s tourism market research team has pored through flight arrivals and hotel occupancy data and casino, retail and dining statistics to produce a new report on Macau’s tourism economy. Published in June, it sits beside our tourism market reports on China (2017), Japan (2016), Malaysia (2015) and Myanmar (2014). Look out, too, for a new report on the emerging outbound travel trends in Australia and New Zealand: due in August.

Charting Asian Consumer Innovations

Across Asia, big investments in tech start-ups, marquee M&As and state-driven infrastructure spending, plus innovations in digital branding are changing the way urban residents live, work and play. Check-in Asia has been contributing analysis of innovative consumer, travel and branding developments in China, Thailand and Indonesia for Mintel’s Trends subscription service. Eclectic recent topics range from a Thai airline banning obese passengers from business class to Jakarta’s goal of becoming ASEAN’s top halal tourism destination by 2020, and from Hangzhou’s preparations for the 2022 Asia Games to new camera platforms at an Indonesian nature park to help visitors frame perfect travel selfies.

China: The World’s Hottest Travel Market

There is no Asia travel trends story bigger than China. The Middle Kingdom is unrivalled as the hottest ticket in global tourism, and we’ve continued to monitor demand patterns in Chinese outbound and domestic travel. In March, Check-in Asia Director Gary Bowerman joined Alex Hadwick, Eye for Travel’s Director of Research, in London to record two mini podcasts discussing:

• The dynamic (and rapidly overlapping) digital payment landscapes in China and South East Asia
• Key 2018 trends to watch in Chinese tourism, ranging from an about-turn in cruise travel to the Russia World Cup and developments in extended family travel.

Rewinding 20 Years of Ctrip

Smartphone-based booking dominates the thinking of hotel and airline CEOs in most markets, but especially China. As Ctrip, China’s dominant online travel agency, prepares to celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2019, we’ll be providing insights and analysis for an Eye for Travel retrospective on one of China’s most prized national brands, which is starting to assert its global presence. Yes, we even remember booking flight tickets online via Ctrip, but paying cash on delivery to a kuai di long before credit card and debit cards (let alone AliPay/WeChatPay) entered the Chinese consumer sphere.

Also in Q1 of 2018, we stayed in style at the Amanyangyun resort near Shanghai for DestinAsian magazine, checked out the shiny new tech-driven T4 at Singapore’s Changi Airport and reported on South East Asia’s fast-expanding aesthetic beauty sector at the Beauty Business Malaysia show in Kuala Lumpur.

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