Ecotourism for the Chinese: up the creek without a paddle

Abstract

For countries that promote themselves as tourist destinations, China has - for some years - been the new Japan. Two decades ago, tourist towns such as Australia’s Gold Coast put up bilingual signs and the travel industry paid 20% loadings to locals who could speak Japanese.

For the past decade, the Australian tourism industry has braced itself for a corresponding influx of package tourists from China. In practice, this has happened much more slowly than projected.

Individual wealth in China has increased enormously, but government controls on overseas travel have relaxed much more slowly. In some ways this was lucky, because we really weren’t ready. Fortunately, the focus to date has been on very tightly guided city shopping tours. Our state and federal governments, however, would prefer inbound Chinese tourists to provide new economic opportunities in regional electorates.

There are some practical difficulties. Australian rural destinations are not at all equipped to handle high volumes of tourists who speak only Chinese, expect to eat Chinese food and are unfamiliar with Australian cultural behaviour. We will have to adapt, as we did for the Japanese.

One of the critical questions, if Chinese tourists begin to visit Australian country areas, is what they will do. What activities will they want, and can we provide them?