With 120 Million Travelers, China Ranks 1st Worldwide For Outbound Tourists

Dec 26, 2015 03:50 AM EST

Visitors crowd at Chinese Sea of Death tourist resort in Daying County to escape high temperature on July 11, 2015 in Suining, Sichuan Province of China. Most parts in China ushered in hot weather in July and more than eight thousand visitors from every corner of China crowded to China Sea f Death to enjoy the cool. (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images)

China remains the world's top source of outbound tourists this year, with 120 million Chinese traveling abroad in 2015, data released by the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) showed.

The number of outbound tourists from China this year surpassed the 109 million Chinese overseas travelers in the previous year and was 13 times the level in 1998, the government data showed.

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The CNTA attributed this year's increase in the number of outbound tourists to more relaxed visa policies offered by several countries and the rising disposable incomes in China.

Countries in Europe, including Italy, France, and the United Kingdom, have rolled out relaxed visa policies to entice Chinese travelers. Other European countries have also introduced travel perks and benefits for Chinese tourists.

Others even trimmed the list of requirements to secure travel visas just to accommodate the burgeoning number of Chinese travelers, who are known to be huge spenders when traveling overseas.

As the number of Chinese tourists going abroad this year has increased, domestic travels also rose to record numbers, authorities noted.

According to the data from the CNTA, a total of four billion journeys were made in the domestic tourism market this year, resulting to tourism revenue of about US$620 billion.

The domestic figure is expected to rise further as China starts to promote rural tourism next year to stir economies of poor regions, the tourism administration revealed.

Meanwhile, Indonesia has recently launched its "Wonderful Indonesia Promotion" in Beijing with the goal of enticing even a fraction of the more than 100 million Chinese travelers.

Indonesia's Deputy Minister of Tourism, Igde Pitana, said his country is aiming to entice 1.3 million Chinese visitors this year and 2 million next year.

In 2104, 959,000 Chinese tourists visited Indonesia, making China the fourth largest source of foreign tourists for the Southeast Asian country.

TagsChina Outbound Tourism, Chinese Tourists, Chinese Tourists Abroad, China Overseas Tourism