An online survey by the COTRI China Outbound Tourism Research Institute revealed a surprisingly relaxed attitude towards the current economic crisis. The question “How will the economic crisis influence Chinese outbound tourism?” got a almost totally balanced answer. 35% of all participant answered “negatively”, but 33% favored the answer “positively” and 25% forecasted “no influence.” The extreme positions of “very positively” or “very negatively” were taken by only 4% and 2% respectively of the participants.

The result is consistent with the real development of China’s Outbound Tourism since the beginning of the global economic crisis in autumn 2008. The growth rates of the number of Mainland Chinese travelling across the border may not have been as spectacular as in earlier years, but China is one of the few tourism source markets which can report a positive development in 2009.

The number of outbound travels is expected to clear the 50 million hurdle for the first time in 2009, confirming the status of China as Asia’s biggest international tourism source market.

The online survey is based on a visitor’s poll to the www.china-outbound.com website of COTRI conducted in the last four months.