China outbound tourism education series part 15: Cultural differences

5 October 2009 // Filed under ChinaContact press release

Travelling in Europe can be a culture shock for Chinese as we have mentioned. It can also be so for the hosts. Managing expectations is equally important for the hotels and service suppliers that engage Chinese tourists.

• The concepts of privacy and space are quite different for Chinese and Westerners. Being loud and nosy is an expression of enjoying oneself and caring for each other, but this might be experienced as rude by Westerners. With such a dense population, Chinese are accustomed to very little personal space and are not used to being on their own.
• Smoking is entrenched in Chinese society as the domain of men. They will find it difficult to accept smoking bans in public spaces. At the same time, they will be puzzled over the prevalence of public smoking amongst women in Europe.
• As China’s history dates back thousands of years, Chinese are not impressed by cultural sites that are ‘only’ a few hundred years old. This is a distinct advantage of Europe over the new world destinations of Australia and North America. The cultural and historical links between China and Europe should be highlighted as much as possible.
• When travelling abroad it is a rare opportunity to experience certain activities that are forbidden in China. Casinos and cabaret shows cause a lot of excitement among visiting Chinese for this reason.
• In China, travel is a service and travel agents are expected to bend over backwards to satisfy their paying customers. In turn, those agents expect their partners in the destination to go along with the client’s demands under any circumstance. The find it difficult to accept the western attitude. What we consider a fair service for a fair price, they would consider inflexibility or lack of caring.
• Because visa approval is still sometimes unpredictable, air tickets and hotels are often confirmed at the last minute. Business people, used to flexible domestic travel, expect to be able to change their plans frequently and therefore do not plan carefully enough to avoid late changes.
• Compared to other nationalities, Chinese groups are never booked months in advance. There is tremendous pressure on travel agents, visa consulates, local suppliers, hotels, guides etc. to provide instant quotations and high quality tours on extremely short notice. Inevitably this often leads to problems on the road and subsequent complaints from the clients. As ADS procedures become the norm and visa application standardised, we expect to see this problem ease.

2009-10-05  ::  Roy Graff