Africa is a final frontier destination with growing appeal for experienced Chinese travelers seeking in-depth, luxury, personalized travel. In this blog post, we look at the overall state of the market, and the Chinese traveler profile to this continent. According to the China Tourism Academy (CTA), Africa welcomed 797,800 Chinese tourists in 2017. Some countries, like Morocco and Tunisia, have seen huge increases in recent years thanks to new visa policies, and interest in Africa is growing among Chinese travelers looking for new destinations to explore. Chinese online travel agency Ctrip.com International reported a 70 percent year-on-year increase in purchases of Africa-related tour products in the first seven months of 2018. Released in November 2018, the Hurun Report’s “Luxury Chinese Traveler 2018 Report” revealed that Africa was the destination with the biggest increase in interest from high net worth (HNW) Chinese travelers, breaking into the top three most popular world regions for travel as it increased from 15 percent in 2017 to 29 percent in 2018. The African countries with the largest Chinese arrival numbers in 2017 were Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Tunisia, South Africa, Mauritius, and Zimbabwe. Following the success of Morocco and Tunisia in attracting Chinese visitors after they went visa-free in 2016 and 2017, respectively, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Angola and Benin all started offering visas-upon-arrival to Chinese nationals in 2018. Who is traveling? Ctrip data shows that in the first half of 2018, 54 percent of Chinese travelers visiting Africa were female, in line with the general ratio of female to male Chinese…
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