Thailand came in second place in a list of the most popular vacation destinations for Chinese tourists traveling abroad. However, the recently released data was collected in 2015 as part of a list of the most popular countries to visit for Chinese travelers.
The U.S. remained the number one destination for tourists coming from mainland China. This information was contained in the fifth annual ‘Chinese International Travel Monitor’ compiled by hotels.com. The report collected answers from 3,000 Chinese tourists that traveled abroad last year, reported Bangkok Post.
The other eight countries that were most often visited by Chinese tourists were: Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia, South Korea, France, Italy and the UK.
There was also data compiled for specific cities as international destinations for Chinese visitors. On that list, Bangkok came in second, but the first most-visited international city was not in the U.S., as you might expect, it was Hong Kong.
Which makes sense since it’s just a few hours away from the mainland.
Chiang Mai also made the list for the first time in the last spot.
The report also contained data about which countries Chinese tourists found most welcoming. Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Australia and Thailand made that list.
But, after the Thailand boycott by Chinese tourists and the viral social media posts by Thais about Chinese tourists behaving badly, who knows if that data will still be true when they collect data for their 2016 list?
However, for now, Thailand was number six of the top 10 places that Chinese tourists hope to in the coming year. Australia was in the number one spot.
This data is especially important since China is the biggest spender on tourism worldwide. Currently, only 5 percent of the country’s 1.4 billion people hold passports, so the potential money to be made from Chinese tourists is almost limitless.
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