International48 <strong>The</strong> <strong>Economist</strong> <strong>April</strong> <strong>19</strong>th <strong>2014</strong>Also in this section49 <strong>The</strong> abuse of migrantsChinese touristsComing to a beach near youHow the growing Chinese middle class is changing the global tourism industryWEN ZHONG is doing what his parentscould only dream of: taking a ofthose who travel go to HongKongor Ma-population now own passports, and mosttwo-week tour of Europe. <strong>The</strong> 28-year-oldfrom Shanghai has already been to France(“very beautiful”) and the Netherlands(“very good English”). He is now flyingfrom Schiphol airport in Amsterdam to hisfinal stop, Finland, where he hopes to seethe Northern Lights (“very exclusive”). MrWen is typical of a new wave of Chinesetourists: young, affluent and travelling independently,rather than on a “20-cities-inten-days” bus tour like those that broughthis predecessors. Such tours still appeal tomost Chinese tourists on their first trip furtherafield than Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan.But a third are now organising theircau. But increased affluence, a trend towardslonger holidays, fewer visa conditionsand growing numbers of repeattravellers mean that every year more willtake foreign trips, and more will venturefarther. By2020 the numberofforeign tripsmade from China will double, predictsAaron Fischer ofCLSA, an investment firm,and spending by Chinese tourists abroadwill triple. <strong>The</strong> world should brace itself,says Wolfgang Arlt ofthe China OutboundTourism Research Institute, to receive100m aspiring Chinese keen for “their turnto see the Mona Lisa” and shop in bigbrandstores, and 50m more experiencedown travel, spending more and stayinglonger in each oftheir destinations.Nearly one in ten international touristsworldwide is now Chinese, with 97.3mGoing placesSpending on outbound tourism, $bnoutward-bound journeys from the countryChina United Germany Russialast year, of which around half were forStatesBritain France Japanleisure. Chinese tourists spend most in total($129 billion in 2013, followed by Ameri-140120cansat$86 billion) and pertax-free transaction($1,130 compared with $494 byRussians). More than 80% say that shoppingis vital to their plans, compared with100806056% of Middle Eastern tourists and 48% of40Russians. <strong>The</strong>y are expected to buy more20luxury goods next year while abroad thantourists from all other countries combined.0<strong>19</strong>95 2000 05 10 13<strong>The</strong> dizzying pace ofgrowth is expectedSource: World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO)to continue. Only around 5% of China’stravellers keen to move beyond the tickboxattractions.Shops, hotels and other tourist businessesare scrambling to profit from thenew arrivals. Schiphol, which has directflights to seven Chinese cities, hands outpresents in the arrivals hall around ChineseNew Year and has a free translationapp to pointChinese travellersto its luxuryshops, all of which accept Chinese currencyand Union Pay (China’s main creditcard). Benno Leeser, the boss of Gassan Diamonds,a Dutch jewellery chain with 14outlets in the airport, travels to China everyyear to schmooze with the travelagents who bring him his best customers.New destinations are trying to workout how to get themselves on the itinerary.After direct airline connections, the nextstep is to make getting a visa easier or, betterstill, to bring in a visa-waiver scheme. In2013 Chinese citizens could visit just 44 othercountries without a pre-arranged visa;Taiwanese citizens could visit 130, andAmericans and Britons over 170. In 2010the European Tour Operators Associationfound that a quarter of Chinese who hadhoped to visit Europe for leisure had abandonedtheir plans because of visa delays.Britain, which is outside the EuropeanSchengen free-travel area, requires its ownvisa—the main reason it gets just a ninth ofthe Chinese tourists France does.America has started to interview Chinesevisa-applicants online and allowsthem to pick up their visas at any of 900bank branches, rather than the Americanembassy. It saw a 22% increase in Chinesevisitors last year. But places with visawaiverschemes, like the Maldives, arereally thriving: last yearthe number ofChinesevisitors to the islands increased by45% and reached nearly a third of the 1.1mtotal. A boom in Chinese honeymoonshelps. Beach resorts are also popular with 1
<strong>The</strong> <strong>Economist</strong> <strong>April</strong> <strong>19</strong>th <strong>2014</strong> International 492 “6+1s”—young couples travelling with onechild and two sets of parents. Parents andchildren do adventure activities; grandparents,who are less likely to speak English,go to evening shows and cannot get lost.<strong>The</strong> next step is to tailor language, productsand services to the Chinese market.Printemps, a shop in Paris, has a dedicatedentrance for Chinese tour groups; Harrodsin London has 100 Union Pay terminalsscattered throughout the store. Both are recruitingMandarin-speaking staff and haveChinese-language websites and maps. Hotelsincrease their appeal by offering Chinesetelevision channels, menus with pictures,and congee (Chinese porridge) forbreakfast. Such details are seen as a sign ofrespect. <strong>The</strong> main consideration of Chinesetourists when choosing a place to visit,says Mr Arlt, is whether it tries to welcomethem. “<strong>The</strong>y are very afraid of beingtreated as second-class.”Products or trips marketed as “authentic”,“limited edition” or “VIP” have alwaysappealed to the Chinese. That used tomean shopping for luxury brands and takingsnapshots at landmarks, says Roy Graffof China Edge, a consultancy. Now thatthese are more commonplace, it stretchesto polar expeditions, cruises and safaris.Switzerland has done well by appealing tothe Chinese longing for blue skies andclean air. Canadian ski resorts are trainingChinese instructors to help attract theirshare ofthe 5m-10m Chinese practising thesport—up from just10,000 in <strong>19</strong>96.Appealing to the new Chinese hordemeans tapping into their love of a good romantictale, says John Kester of the UNWorld Tourism Organisation. Thailandsaw the number of Chinese visitors tripleafter a blockbuster film, “Lost in Thailand”,inspired a generation to come and sampleThai beer. Mauritius is hoping that “FiveMinutes to Tomorrow”, a romance due outlater this year featuring Liu Shishi, a popularactress, and partly filmed on the island,will bring it a similar bonanza.<strong>The</strong> toughest step is getting noticed byChinese would-be travellers, says FrankBudde of the Boston Consulting Groupand co-authorof“Winningthe NextBillionAsian Travellers”. Nearly half of China’spopulation is now online, and two-thirdsof those planning to travel use online materialwhen preparing their itinerary. Sincethey use different search engines and social-mediaplatforms from everywhereelse, success largely depends on beingblogged about on these platforms. Here,destinations can make theirown luck. TourismNew Zealand’s decision to host thefairy-tale wedding of Yao Chen, an actresswith 66m followers on Weibo, China’sequivalent of Twitter, in Queenstown in2012 was rewarded with 40m posts andcomments on discussion forums, 7,000news articles—and a surge in interest fromChinese lovebirds. 7<strong>The</strong> abuse of migrantsAnd still they comeAll work, no rightsMigrant population as % of totalSelected receiving countries (by region), 201344 15 12 1GulfStatesNorthAmericaEuropeIndex of migrant workers’ rights2009, 1=strongestAll1.0Family andmarriageResidence0.80.60.40.20Public servicesSources: Martin Ruhs; UN; <strong>The</strong> <strong>Economist</strong>LatinAmericaCivil andpoliticalEmploymentBalancing the interests ofmigrant workers and the countries they live inWHAT government would tolerate itscitizens’ passports being confiscated,their earnings being withheld and theirdeaths being covered up? Nepal’s, it seems.In September reports ofthe abuse ofNepalesemigrants working on stadiums for the2022 football World Cup in Qatar, and thedeaths of at least 44 of them, appeared inthe Guardian, a British newspaper. <strong>The</strong>Nepalese government’s first response wasto recall its ambassador to Qatar: theGuardian had quoted her describing theGulf state as an “open jail”. Shortly afterwards,Nepalese and Qatari officials held ajoint press conference in Doha at whichthey insisted Nepalese workers were “safeand fully respected”. Reports to the contrarywere false and driven by “inappropriatetargets and agendas”.According to Martin Ruhs of OxfordUniversity, the Nepalese government’s apparentlack of concern can be explained bylooking at the interests of those involved.Forall the mistreatment, Nepalese workersearn far more in Qatar than they could athome. Remittances make up a quarter ofNepalese GDP. If the Nepalese governmentwere to insist that rules protectingmigrant workers in Qatar should be enforced,Qatari employers might look forworkers elsewhere.Mr Ruhs has drawn up an index of migrantrights (see chart): he finds that countrieswith more rights for migrant workerstend to be less keen on admitting newones. In the Gulf states and Singapore,where migrants have few rights on paper,the foreign workforce is huge: 94% ofworkersin Qatar were born abroad. Swedenand Norway, where migrants can use publicservices, claim welfare benefits andbring in dependents, admit relatively fewpurely economic migrants.This trade-off is visible even within theEuropean Union, where the recent accessionof12 relatively poor eastern Europeancountries has sparked a debate about migrants’rights to welfare. In January DavidCameron, Britain’s prime minister, clashedwith his Oxford contemporary, Radek Sikorski,Poland’s foreign minister. Mr Cameronwants to be able to exclude recentlyarrived European immigrants from welfareand public housing. “IfBritain gets ourtaxpayers, shouldn’t it also pay their benefits?”Mr Sikorski responded.In Europe the debate is multilateral; MrCameron intends to promote his point ofviewaspartofa package to reform the EU’ssingle labour market. Elsewhere the movementofpeople is increasingly regulated bybilateral agreements and diplomacy. Sincea diaspora can help poor countries develop,sending states must try to protect therights of migrant workers without makingthem such a burden as to be unwelcome,points out David McKenzie of the WorldBank. Receiving countries weigh their nationalinterests, real or perceived, againstinternational obligations.<strong>The</strong> calculations vary from country tocountry. Some sending countries, such asthe Philippines, come down on the side ofstronger rights: Filipinos must be offered ahigh wage to be allowed to leave for a job,and their government sends envoys andinspectors to the main receiving countries.Others, like Nepal, are lax. Amnesty International,an NGO, is almost as critical of itsgovernment’s tolerance of dodgy recruitmentagencies and exploitative brokers asit is ofQatari employers.A UN convention on migrant workers’rights which came into force in 2003 hasbeen ratified by only 47 countries, most ofwhich are net senders of migrants. It islargely unenforced. A weaker treaty coveringjust the basics might do more good, arguesMrRuhs, since the rich countries mostmigrants move to might sign it, and help tocrack down on the worst abuses in placessuch as Qatar. 7
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