Chinese tourists who hail from smaller cities in China are now travelling more often than their counterparts from the mainland's bigger cities.

This was among the major findings of an outbound tourism report released by the China Tourism Academy and Ctrip which covered the first half of 2016, reported the China Daily.

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According to the report, tourists from China's smaller cities have grown at a faster clip.

Most of these Chinese travelers hail from Changsha of Hunan province, Shenzhen of Guangdong province, Chongqing, Chengdu of Sichuan province, Wuhan of Hubei province, Kunming of Yunnan province, Fuzhou of Fujian province, Xi'an of Shaanxi province, Nanjing of Jiangsu province and Hangzhou of Zhejiang province.

The report also bared that Chinese tourists from smaller cities have spent more than those coming from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Tourists from Suzhou from Jiangsu province ranked first among the top spenders, as they splurged an average of 6,125 yuan each during their overseas travels.

Travelers from Wenzhou of Zhejiang and Kunming of Yunnan province came in next in the list of bigtime spenders.

Tourists from Beijing, on the other hand, only ranked 8th among the top 10 spenders list after shelling out 5,568 yuan each.

The report however noted that despite the increasing number of outbound tourists from China's smaller cities, tourists from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou still account for the majority of outbound travelers,

More than 59 million visits were made by Chinese mainland tourists to foreign destinations from January to June of this year, an increase of 4.3 percent year-on-year, which means the number of Chinese outbound tourists during that period equaled that of the entire Italian population.

"China has become the largest source country of many countries' inbound tourism market, such as Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Russia and the United Kingdom," the report said.

"However, those who have passport only account less than five percent of China's total population. The outbound tourism industry in China still has a lot of space of further development," the report added, highlighting the growing number of globe-trotting Chinese tourists.

Tagschina, Chinese Tourists