GOLDEN WEEKS - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 225

One study found that while Chinese tourists typically spend 8 percent of their discre-
tionary income on a single trip within China, they can double that amount on a trip
abroad, often traveling with a list of goods to buy for their friends. In London, they have
surpassed shoppers from Russia, the United States and the Gulf states as the biggest spend-
ers, according to tax-refund records of luxury-goods stores there.
France comes out on top of survey after survey as the country the Chinese most want to
visit. Chinese tourists know France by its icons: the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and
the Louvre. They associate the French with elegance, history, romance and luxury. And
the French were among the first to see the potential of wooing Chinese tourists. France
was one of the first countries to translate its official tourist website into Chinese. French
tourist officials prodded businesses to prepare for the Chinese before the first tour groups
arrived in 2003, recruiting Sino-French chefs to prepare Chinese food, finding Chinese-
speaking tour guides and especially Chinese translators for department stores.
Today the Chinese version of the grand tour of foreign countries looks more like a grand
shopping spree. Chinese translators are poised at cosmetics counters, lingerie departments
and handbags. Chinese speakers are available for personal shopping, and some stores have
special entrances for Chinese tour groups. While this is nothing new for France—the
French were just as accommodating for the Japanese when they first began traveling in
the 1960s—the volume of the Chinese tourists has outpaced earlier waves of new foreign
tourists.
Cultural clashes are inevitable. Christian Delom, the senior French tourism official,
said his agency is “monitoring” the Chinese tour operators to make sure they are following
the rules, similar to the stance of New Zealand's Hickton, who found those operators gou-
ging the planeloads of their fellow Chinese tourists. At the same time, the Chinese gov-
ernment is training the tour operators and the Chinese tourists themselves, giving them
handouts reminding them that they are cultural “ambassadors” of China and should be-
have accordingly—no shouting, no spitting and no disputing prices at luxury stores.
Matteo, our guide in Venice, repeated universal fears that Chinese tour operators were
ruining legitimate Italian businesses by dropping off their tourists at stores and pizza par-
lors newly purchased by the Chinese. “They serve 'pizza' that doesn't taste like pizza,” he
said. Matteo also pointed to the stores that sold Chinese tourists “Venetian glass” that was
made in China.
Chinese tourists and their money is topic number one in the global tourism industry.
Rashmi Sharma is a jeweler and owner of the high-end Jewels of Africa boutiques in Zam-
bia. She said Chinese visitors buy some of her most expensive pieces, so much so that sev-
eral Chinese businessmen want to become her partners. “I don't know what I'll do,” she
told me at her store in the Lusaka Intercontinental Hotel. “They are very good business-
men.”