Magic Travel 2019 High-end Travelling Trend Analysis Released in Beijing

With the changes in age, education, income, consumption concept and confidence of high-end consumers, as well as the changes in liquidity such as urban intergenerational differences and geographical differences, the Chinese consumption pattern is undergoing revolutionary changes. Multi-dimensional changes are superimposed, resulting in more diverse changes in the final consumption behavior of Chinese consumers. At the same time, China's high-end travelling consumer market has also undergone profound changes in the invisible aspects: the consumer show the demand and willingness of niche consumption has increased significantly; the tourist destinations have become more de-massified and niche; the experience consumption model has been going deeper; the post-80s and the post-90s have become mainstream consumer groups. These conditions are expected to inject unlimited power into the high-end tourism consumer market.

As a travelling company for outbound business, Utour Group Co., Ltd. serves more than 2 million tourists every year. Its high-end brand, Magic Travel, has been developing the high-end tourism market for five years. Based on the analysis of the travelling industry, Magic Travel released the analysis of 2019 high-end travelling trend.

High-end travelling crowds constitute a trend change

Trend 1: the post-60s and the post-70s still play a major role in the high-end travelling, occupying the dominant position

High-end customers over 40 years old account for 85% of the Magic Travel’s high-end customers. They have stable incomes, and the short-term economic changes have little impact on their consumption decisions. The ultimate location and customized travelling are first choice to them.

Trend 2: consumers in the second-tier and third-tier city continue to grow

As for the distribution of consumers of Magic Travel high-end products, customers from first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai are still the main buyers of high-end products. The high-end customers in Xi'an, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Kunming and other second-tier and third-tier cities have taken shape, and the number of tourists has gradually increased. Although these customers have not been exposed to tourism for a long time, they have strong stickiness and high demand of niche and high-end tourism. In addition, the exploration of more small-but-excellent destinations and more novel experiences are their new target. With an increasing number of destinations on international routes and increasing flexibility of visa policies in various countries, the enthusiasm of tourists has been continuously increasing, and travelling has become an important part of their life. As a result, the growth rate of tourism consumption of second-tier and third-tier cities is almost equal to that of first-tier cities.

Trend 3: the trend to younger ages in high-end tourism market appears

Since 2016, the post-80s and post-90s have gradually entered the high-end tourism market and become a rising star to high-end outbound tourism. Such young customers have soon become the core force in consumer group due to their improving incomes. They pay more attention to enjoying travelling and pursing for life quality. These young people take a fancy to price, look for excitement, adventure, and personal preferences, and are more accessible to social media. Furthermore, they are keener on star style when they are travelling abroad. Among the high-end post-80 and post-90 customers, social hub travel and hub culture are broadly evident.

Inventory of the tendency of high-end travelling mode

Trend 1: customized travel will define new direction to high-end tourism

According to the data from Magic Travel, high-end groups have higher demand of comfort, freedom and privacy. To these high-end customers, except extreme destinations that are difficult to reach through self-guided tour, as for the rest of the destinations, they are willing to join small luxury tour groups with less than five people or choose private ordering tour. This trend is expected to become more evident in the future, so it also make higher request for high-end customized travel agencies. Hence, experienced private travel planners will become the standard request to high-end people.

Therefore, Magic Travel is focusing on training private travel designers. Within the five to ten years’ training, these designers not only need to obtain the high-end travel thinking, be familiar with high-end guests’ consumption features and preferences, and completely acquire high-end tourism resources, but also need to have the ability to match appropriate high-end resources with different customers. In this way, the designers will eventually offer unforgettable and happy feelings to their customers.

Trend 2: the high-end travelers have longer travel duration and prefer in-depth travel

According to data from Magic Travel, the duration of high-end travel has been increasing with years, and the deeper and finer tourism products have gained favor of more people. Tourists with such preference, rather than travelling to tourist destinations cursorily, are more willing to visit places where ordinary tourists can't go, taste local food, and experience activities with local features. At present, based on the data from Magic Travel, the amount of journey over 10 days accounts for 95% of the total volume of the products. High-end customers generally believe that 15 days is the most acceptable duration of a journey, and more than 30% of the high-end customers say they can accept longer duration.

Trend 3: cruise, skiing, and light luxury tour become new favorite, and Internet accelerates the popularization of high-end experiences

Cruise travel has long been a slow-paced way of travel favored by western people, and in recent years it has gradually been accepted by high-end Chinese customers. Whether it is the newly emerging Myanmar river cruise, the extreme adventure such as cruise to south and north poles, or the mysterious West African Sliversea cruise, the whole family can travel to different inland destinations in this mobile luxury hotel, and enjoy a relaxing and wonderful vocation.

With the advancement of Internet, Chinese consumers are also chasing for the advanced travel experiences in the world. China's high-end consumers are learning from international high-end consumers who are willing to accumulate wealth and pay more attention to enjoying their life. Summer vacation, winter skiing, luxury featured hotel, natour, mountaineering, cycling, swimming, and surfing have become the new orientation of high-end consumers in China. Thus, a series of slowlife experience tourism products with long duration have been generated, including pure travel products such as summer high-end holiday village, and skiing products in places such as Hokkaido, Switzerland and France. With the quality of life experience being improved, this trend will spread among more high-end people.

Analysis of the trend of high-end tourists’ destinations

Trend 1: the destinations more niche or harder to reach will become the dark horses

As the leader of the whole society, high-end groups have the strong superiority due to their successful life, and this is reflected to their choice of tourist destinations. Niche destinations rich in natural landscape, stunning, magical and hard to reach, unconventional and not very popular among Chinese people have become their targets, for example, west Africa, Tahiti, the Galapagos Islands, Kamchatka Peninsula, the north pole, Amazon jungle, Churchill Town, etc. As these destinations are rather uncommon and difficult to reach, and trip to these places always accompanied with high expense, these destination have become a way for people to distinguish between classes.

Trend 2: hot events have lasting effects to high-end people’s choice of destinations

Another major factor in high-end people’s choice of destination is international hot events. Participating in hot events will bring high-end people a continuous sense of experience, and strengthen their social discourse power. For example, FIFA World Cup, the Olympics Games, the Premier League and La Liga have effectively promoted Russia, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Spain, making them popular tourist destinations to high-end people at that time. In addition, global festivals that attract worldwide attention have become special experiences to high-end travel, such as San Fermín in Spain, Holi Festival in India and Calgary Stampede in Canada, which can highlight the significance of high-end people’s travel. "East Asia Railway Journey" in countries along the Belt and Road is a high-end travel product rising in response to national policies. Although hot events, grand competitions and famous festivals have greater impacts on price of the tour in these destinations, they will not influence high-end tourists on making decision to visit these places.

Need for travel is more diverse and the purpose for travel is more accurate

Trend 1: demand of niche service is evident

In addition to their own ideas on destination selection, high-end people have very clear and simple purposes for travelling, such as aurora watching, polar bear chasing, and tropical rainforest exploration. They also have various lifelization-oriented travel purposes, to learn about international educational institutions for their children’s study abroad, to buy house abroad, or to do physical examination abroad. These high-end people’s requirements for niche service are more diversified, such as the choice of restaurant types, tour guide’s gender and level of knowledge, the comfortableness of transportation, privacy, flexibility and so on have all manifested these people’s demand of niche services.

Trend 2: cost-performance ratio still attracts attention

High-end people pay more attention to travel budget and cost control, as high cost-performance ratio of products reflects their astuteness and excellent financial management skills. These characteristics will be reflected on product experience, subdivision of food level in hotel, depth and novelty of destination, etc., unique products with high cost-performance ratio are always the most popular produces among customers. For Magic Travel, high-volume products will better enhance their bargaining power, bring long-term driving force to products, and this is a goal that Magic Travel is chasing for.

Trend 3: travel planning and habit of travelling gradually formed

For Chinese people, one problem of their travel duration and frequency cycle is that they lack habits of planning ahead before travelling. Then it has broken down at the top. High-end tourists are often the first to enter the outbound tourism market. With the increasing travel frequency and accumulated travel experience of high-end tourists, under the pressure of high-intensity work, they are encouraged to plan for their holidays in advance and better balance the relationship between life and work. Under the guidance and planning of private travel designers, high-end people can make perfect travel plans for themselves by means of annual leave, joint leave and off-peak travel, so as to control costs and resources more effectively and have the best travel experience.

Trend 4: detailed experience enriches the feelings of the trip

Travelling make people feel like time slows down in the same length of time, so travelling changes the width of life. High-end tourists like to add in the same destination experience a sense of activities, such as drifting, cycling, hang gliding, gold washing, making commemorative coins, learning cooking, attending a wedding, and attending a worship activity. These arrangements will make them deeply involved in the local culture, experience detailed folk features, receive more interesting feelings of travelling, and enrich their life experiences.

Trend of values and social values of high-end group (rank 5 to 1)

Value trends:

Pursue high quality of life 4.1;

Like challenges and self-improvement 3.9;

Love trying new things and pursuing for new ideas 3.8;

Like being distinctive 3.6

Trends in social outlook:

Like joining in a hub with like-minded people 3.7

Like making friends with elites and local tyrants 3.1

Opinion leaders in the group 3.1

Access to high-end travel information

Trend 1: WeChat and Weibo became the No. 1 access to information

As China's digitalization process continues improving, the mobile internet has become an important way for the public to get tourism information, which has also changed the marketing mode of tourism industry. High-end people prefer digital applications, such as Weibo, WeChat official account and WeChat mini programs, so that they can experience the convenience of “remian indoors while customise my own trip” brought by technology. In addition, high-end people have high awareness of the brand, and prefer a well-known brand or a professional brand in a certain field.

Trend 2: circle marketing may become the No. 2 way for high-end tourism market to win customers

High-end people have strict hierarchical divisions for their social circles, so they are more willing to listen to their friends' suggestions, and the activities in the same level are more likely to resonate with them, thus facilitating travel. The high-end people have strong social attribute, so they can advertise the brand by word-of-mouth communication and endorse the brand. In addition, another big feature of the high-end crowd is the high repurchase rate and high brand loyalty.

Trend 3: member service, old customer tracking is the source of improving brand value-added services

After five years’ development of Magic Travel, we found that members clubs, membership activities and other ways are more likely to bring together high-end people. Like-minded travel friends, through continuous value-added activities, will enhance member stickiness and loyalty. The perfect membership service system will provide them the first-hand travel information and more intimate value-added services to stimulate consumption.

High-end tourism + N, future development trend of demand

Trend 1: high-end overseas medical care become the most urgent consume demand of high-net-worth people

With the emphasis to and pursuit for healthy life, the high-end tourism people is not limited to tourism shopping, cultural entertainment, or social space, but the consumption pattern of ‘medical + travel’ is increasing year by year, and the development momentum is amazing. The wealth of high-end people is no longer accumulated by hardware facilities, such as estate and automobile. More people begin to pay attention their health, such as taking medical examinations in Japan and enjoying high-quality medical services overseas have become the new favorites of high-income people in China. Therefore, Magic Travel launched the ‘Magic Health’ section released in 2017. Its business involves overseas medical examinations, anti-aging, assisted reproduction, and high-end medical care. The number of people involved in health tourism is also increasing exponentially year by year. With 27 years of in-depth tourism business of Utour Group Co., Ltd, it has accumulated a large number of overseas first-hand medical resources for high-end customers, and also escorted overseas high-end medical services.

Trend 2: overseas immigration become the main way of asset allocation for high-end people

According to the survey, up to 80% of the high-net-worth crowds surveyed said that there was a need for overseas investment and home ownership in the future, and more than half of them have overseas investment experience. Real estate has become their most popular overseas investment target, accounting for more than 40%. Utour Overseas Property, relying on the group's tourism advantages, investing in overseas resorts, and then using tourists to enrich accommodation, making overseas real estate projects a new way of investment for high-end people.

Trend 3: overseas education resources become "just needed"

Under the influence of the traditional thoughts of Chinese, the investments of education and training for the next generation occupy the largest proportion in a family. The idea of “letting the next generation receive the best education” has made overseas study tour and study abroad to rapidly climb into the first-class needs of high-end people. Letting children go abroad for further study has almost become a 100% choice for high-end families. The data given by Ueducation Study Tour shows that its annual business growth rate is close to 80% after its three years’ foundation.

The introduction of Magic Travel:

Magic Travel, a high-end brand of A-share listed company Utour Group Co., Ltd, has been engaged in high-end travel for 5 years, and it is at the forefront of the industry. It is committed to creating a high-quality travel that is unforgettable for a lifetime, serving more than 5,000 members, and keenly perceiving little changes of high-end travel. Seeing trend, leading trend, choosing miracle, gathering together with like-minded people, travelling with dream, and achieving the rich life.

From 2013 to 2018, Magic Travel was awarded the top 10 best luxury travel agencies in mainland China by Hurun Report, and it was also awarded one of the top 10 partners in the world by the top adventure cruise companies, such as Hurtigruten Cruise, Pontant Cruise and Quark Expedition Cruise.