Singapore – China’s rapid economic growth has fostered a tourist boom among the mainland Chinese, with Southeast Asia the favorite destination, at least for now.
The surge in package tour groups from China, an important source of income for the region, is also giving rise to an unflattering stereotype: the loud, rude and culturally naive Chinese tourist.
Sound familiar? The tide of travelers from China mirrors the emergence of virtually every group of overseas tourists since the Romans, from Britons behaving badly in the Victorian era and ugly Americans in postwar Europe to the snapshot-happy Japanese of the 1980s.
So it is not much of a surprise that tourists from mainland China, often going abroad for the first time, are leaving similar complaints in their wake.
But China is also manufacturing its own twist on the age-old tale, as became apparent in July when a group of more than 300 from China took umbrage at illustrations of a pig’s face on their check-in vouchers at a casino resort in predominantly Muslim Malaysia.
Although the resort said the drawings were meant only to distinguish their Chinese guests from Muslims, who cannot eat pork (or gamble), the Chinese demonstrated their pique by staging a sit-in in the hotel lobby and belting out their national anthem. It took 40 police officers with dogs to clear them out.
Unlike Westerners or Japanese who splurge on expensive resorts and spend their entire vacations sunbathing, the Chinese devote a greater proportion of their holiday time to sightseeing and shopping.
China’s tourists stand apart from other tourists in other ways, say members of Singapore’s hospitality industry.
“They’re more demanding,” said Johnson Lim, who handles groups from China for a local travel agency. Boon Sang Lip, a souvenir stand operator, put it more bluntly: “They like to talk in a loud and not-very-polite way,” he said.
When they check into hotels, for instance, many tourists from China demand the top floors, Lim said. Some feel entitled to take souvenirs such as hotel pillows, he said. None of this may come as a surprise to anyone who has traveled through China. In a nation of 1.3 billion people, getting where you want to go often means literally pushing someone else out of the way.
For all the challenges, China’s tourist migrations represent a lucrative source of income that countries such as Singapore are vying to attract. Casinos are one case in point. With casinos illegal in China, virtually every trip abroad includes such a visit. Gambling losses by Chinese nationals overseas amount to $72 billion a year, according to CLSA Emerging Markets in Hong Kong.