The Chinese markets might be all over the place, but the country’s GDP is still forecast to grow about 7 percent, which is on track with Beijing’s target of 6.5 percent GDP growth through 2020. While China’s full GDP report will be released at 9 p.m. today, a sure bright spot will be the tourism sector, which saw a 42 percent increase in investment (for a total of $152 billion in 2015) over the previous year, according to China’s National Tourism Administration. It estimates that tourism investment in China will surpass $455 billion in the next three years. This is good news for hotels since, according to China’s Tourism Administration, Chinese citizens made over 4 billion domestic trips and 120 million trips overseas. A new GfK study revealed that China produced 109 million outbound tourists last year, and they spent $229 billion. According to GfK, half of China’s outbound travelers are ages 15-29 years old while 37 percent fall into the 30-44 age group and 10 percent are 45-59. Read more here.
