According to recent data, Australia is at the bottom of the list of holiday destinations to which Chinese tourists want to go. If Australia is to attract Chinese tourists, it must improve the quality of service and accommodation.
According to figures from the China National Tourism Administration, Australia is ranked 17th behind Russia in 13th place, seventh in Vietnam and champion Thailand on the list of destinations for which Chinese tourists want to go on vacation.
"the five-star hotel is too old, the service is not good, the price is up again." Kevin Xu, general manager of Hongcheng Tourism Agency, said. "in the rest of Asia, the hotel is new and serves well. And there aren't enough four-star hotels in Sydney and Melbourne in CBD. They raised prices a lot during the peak season. "
Xu's comments differ from those in which Australia's goverment and tourism officials celebrated last year to attract more than a million Chinese tourists.
The fact is that Australia has focused its investment on mining to meet China's demand for iron ore and coal, but as commodity prices fall and China itself shifts to a consumer economy, Australia needs to develop a tourism-centric service industry.
Australia's beautiful coastline, shiny Sydney Harbor and vast interior attracted visitors from the United States and Japan at the end of the last century, and are still attractive to visitors today. Sydney and its Opera House are still among the world's top 25 tourist destinations and landmark buildings in the Tripadvisor 2016 tourist Choice Award, while Kunzhou's Saint Ling Island Beach ranks 12th in the world's most beautiful beach awards.
Xu, who has been in the tourism industry for 22 years, said Australian tourism groups employed many Putonghua-speaking employees to help Chinese tourists and said the gold coast had good facilities and services.
But Australia still needs to do more to attract Chinese tourists, who are the most expensive people in the world to travel abroad. Australia's hotels, resorts and their standards of service are far from the best in the world.
The Australian tourist Board said it realised five years ago that Australia needed new and higher standards of hotels and promoted tourism programs among Chinese and Southeast Asian investors. They cited Dalian Wanda's A $2 billion investment in projects such as Sydney and Gold Coast, and Sunshine Insurance's purchase of Sydney's Sheraton Hotel as a success story.
China is Australia's most valuable tourism market, spending more than A $77 billion a year and an estimated 13 billion by 2020.
