Chinese are coming: Beijing now rules Lanka’s holiday offerings
View(s):More Easterners are meeting the Western arrival figures that has resulted in a change in the profile of visitors to Sri Lanka with more Chinese as opposed to Europeans preferring to holiday in the country.
The sharp rise in Chinese arrivals in February has created a stir which was coming for some time and some believe this momentum is expected to last throughout the year. For the first time, Indian travellers dropped to second place after China in February arrivals’ statistics.
In the face of the changes seen in the numbers the visitor arrivals are causing a stir within the hotels, some of which are looking at attracting the new visitors by adhering to their tastes and preferences.
It was interesting to find out that some of the rooms on offer were twin sharing as was the requirement among Chinese visitors as opposed to double rooms. In fact when there are more Chinese guests hotel would cater to their palette even during breakfast with a Chinese porridge and Chinese noodles among other delicacies as required.
Hoteliers are beginning to see the need to keep the new visitor attracted to the destination by providing them with the relevant amenities and in this respect, they would be provided that which they personally prefer as well. Moreover, some hotels have even gone to the extent of catering to their services with a separate concierge with a separate suite of rooms on a dedicated floor to catering to the exclusive demands of these clients.
In future the industry needs to cater to the Chinese with special menus in Mandarin or Cantonese and even sign boards to create greater convenience. In addition, there was a need to have more guides fluent in the languages that they could communicate with the Chinese and not simply continue teaching the French and German at hotel schools as was the current practice.
Chinese arrivals had seen a surge since 2010 that kept climbing from 11, 660 and later increased to 27, 316 in 2012 and skyrocketed to 128, 166 in 2014 and then last year the figures went ahead to 214,783.
On the contrary the French, German and British travellers have been a bit less resilient at times and have not taken to visiting the country more often as their Mandarin-speaking holidaymakers.
British nationals were on the rise and ahead of the rest of the Western European visitors but though this market was bringing in the numbers like over 137, 000 in 2013 that increased to over 144, 000 the next year the visitors from India had already overtaken them and China was closely following.
Most travellers from Germany, which was one of the highest generators of tourist traffic to the country in the past was now seen to slower its pace in arrivals with 45, 727 arriving in 2010 and moving up to 55, 882 in 2011. But in 2014 the Chinese arrivals had overtaken Germans with the latter figures at over 102, 000.
Indian holidaymakers have been increasingly on the rise since 2010 from over 126, 000 that moved up to over 200, 000 since 2013 and hitting over 316, 000 growing by 30 per cent compared to the previous year.