China's outbound tourism is currently in a state of full speed development. In 2015, the number of outbound Chinese tourists reached 128 million, and it is estimated that the consumption sum of these tourists in overseas countries reached USD 292 billion. Let’s look at the outbound travel destinations of Chinese tourists---most of the travel destinations they visited are China's special administrative regions (but in statistics still listed as outbound destinations) or neighboring countries, for example Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asian countries are their preferred destinations. In addition, the number of Chinese tourists to the United States, Canada and Australia also showed a trend of substantial growth. An important statistics shows that the ratio of outbound travelers under the age of 35 exceeded 50%, and the proportion of tourists who travelled abroad multiple times within a year is more than 60%, although among these 60% of outbound tourists, most of them travelled to Hong Kong multiple times.
When looking at the population of the two countries, we can conclude that from the perspective of proportion, the amount of Hungarian tourists to China is much higher than the amount of Chinese visitors to Hungary. In 2015, nearly 30,000 Hungarian tourists travelled to China, and the number is expected to increase year by year.
Last year on May 1st, regular direct flights between Beijing and Budapest were re-launched, which will greatly promote the tourism exchanges between the two countries. Air China started four flights every week between the two capitals and the flight to Budapest has a short stop in Minsk. The re-opening of direct flight will bring stronger incentives to the tourism industry which has been growing substantially so far, because the lack of direct flights used to be the biggest problem for travel agencies. In addition to boosting the tourism industry, the launch of direct flights will also effectively promote the development of business relations.
Hungary pays particular attention to the Chinese market (thanks to the policy of “Opening to the East” implemented during the past few years). Through tourism promotion in China, it also made people there know more about Hungary’s other national conditions, and improved the investment interests in the Chinese business circle. To maintain a good relationship with the Chinese government is very beneficial to promote the development of tourism industry. Both the interest and trust in Hungary have been improved in recent years.
The Chinese government's policy also helps to promote the tourism industry in Central and Eastern Europe, which is within the area of “One Belt & One Road” strategy of the Chinese government, and the goal of the strategy is to revive the ancient Silk Road. The strategy first focuses on combining the whole Eurasia region from the aspect of economy, but the launch of this strategy also played an effective role in promotion of tourism. As the strategy is committed to ground a thought at domestic and international levels that Asia and Europe actually belong to one continent, and travel and communication between each other is very natural. Our country is part of the Silk Road strategy, and in the future there will also be more investment in infrastructure to help attract more Chinese tourists to visit our country.
The main events of 2016
3-6th of March 2016 the “Utazás” Exhibition with other important evets was held in Budapest. The repositioned “Utazás” Exhibition’s Guest of Honor was the People’s Republic of China. The most important happening attached to the Exhibition, was that China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) opened their regional headquarter office in CEE called China National Tourism Office (CNTO). The main tasks of CNTO will be to help and coordinate the CEE region’s outbound tourism.
19th May 2016 Firsth World Conference on Tourism for Development (UNWTO) followed by Beijing International Travel Expo (BITE) 1500 companies in tourism business had the chance to know better Hungary by a comprehensive presentation.
11th June 2016. As the part of China-CEEC Investment and Trade Expo the China-CEEC Tourism Exchange Conference was held in the city of Ningbo. On the forum the CEE Countries had the possibility to present themselves as a potential destination for outbound tourists, and also present the local investment circumstances. The Guest of Honor of the event was Hungary.
1-3. July 2016. 21st North China Travel Fair was held in Hebei, Tangshan. Hungary was one of the main guests. More than 1000 travel agencies represented themselves including Ctrip and Alitrip.
The influence of “Film Tourism” is rising continuously in China. More films was shooting in foreign countries, and more local TV channels shooting their own reality shows with Chinese stars whole over the world. The Shanghai Media Group (SMG) was cooperating with the Hungarian Tourism Agency Ltd. and the General Consulate of Shanghai and in the beginning of June was making the “Brothers of Flowers” reality show in four CEE countries including Hungary.
24th August 2016 Qunar.com in cooperation with Beijing T&G Entertainment Co. Ltd held a press conference and announced that the Love Actually (Renjian Zhiwei Shi Qinghuan) TV series will be shoot in Budapest, Hungary not in Prague, Check Republic. The shooting was successfully finished in October 2016. The Qunar will make a big campaign to introduce the scenes in Hungary, which means, that the places will turn into a fancy tourism destinations to Chinese tourists arriving there. In the same time, the two main actors Tong Dawei’s and Chen Jiao En’s advertisement campaign also will be released and they will appear in front of well-known buildings of Hungary. By this show Hungary will arrive to approximately 500 million Chinese households around the country.
The development of bilateral connections:
12th October 2016 Dr. Gusztav Bienerth Government Commissioner for Tourism payed an official visit to China. During his visit a Memorandum of Understanding was signed by the Ministry of National Development and the China National Tourism Administration. Both sides underlined the importance of the bilateral cooperation in the field of developing tourism, to contribute the mutual recognition of each other’s culture and history. The Commissioner was also visited Macao and represented Hungary at the Global Tourism Economy Forum (GTEF) where he met Ms. Pansy Ho the main organizer of the forum and consulted with the leaders of UNWTO, PATA and the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC)
