Richemont, a luxury goods brand owned by Cartier, said that Chinese outbound tourism is making its way back to Asia and Australia, helping boost luxury spend in those markets.
Affluent Chinese tourists often splurge on luxury goods when overseas with Skift reporting that before the pandemic, Chinese shoppers bought 70 per cent of their luxury goods abroad. Chinese tourists often seek cheaper prices for high-end goods outside of their home country, making the luxury-goods industry quite dependent on outbound Chinese tourism.
This, of course, came to a halt due to strict travel restrictions from China that stymied that source of income.
Richemont CFO Bukhart Grund said that markets like Thailand, Japan and even Dubai have rebounded, but this is yet to appear in Europe. The group’s CEO Jerome Lambert added to this saying, “When more flights are added from China to Europe, we will see more tourist outflows come back.”
Its estimated by Luxe Digital that in 2023 an estimated 110 million outbound trips will be made from Mainland China. This only represents about two-thirds of pre-pandemic level, but the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute expects the number to grown to 228 million trips by 2030.
This is only enhanced by the fact that affluent Chinese outbound tourists spend more while travelling abroad than from any other country in the world. Chinese tourists, on average, spend twice as much as their counterparts from the United States when travelling overseas, according to the United National World Tourism Organization.
