Tourists flock to Singapore’s Marina Bay in April. ZHENG ZHIWEI/XINHUA
According to industry insiders, Chinese parents are booking more domestic and overseas study trips and educational tours this summer compared with the same period last year, and the market is expected to enter a golden period of growth.
However, according to Beijing-based online travel agency Qunar, parents are becoming more cautious when choosing study and education travel products and paying more attention to quality.
The most popular destinations for study trips are the UK, the US and Singapore. These trips mainly involve attending international classes abroad and taking in-depth tours of museums and renowned universities.
In addition to the time-tested experiences of visiting prestigious universities in Europe and the US, Kunar’s research also found that niche destinations in Northern Europe with an emphasis on natural landscape tourism, such as Finland and Norway, are becoming popular for study trips this summer.
More and more parents are choosing courses that emphasize humanities, history, nature, aesthetic education, and highly experiential and interactive projects.
According to industry observers, people born in the 1980s and 1990s – today’s young parents – are the main consumer demographic in the parent-child travel market and are more willing to pay for quality parent-child travel experiences.
“For example, we’ve seen a huge increase in bookings this year to participate in our turtle conservation project in Bali, Indonesia, and our elephant conservation project in Thailand. It’s more meaningful for the kids because they get to do something on their own,” said Yan Lanru, Kunar’s director of research and training tours.
“For domestic study trips, several travel agencies have organized cultural tours in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, accompanied by experienced research leaders and experts, which will help children to deeply experience and understand the ancient capital’s culture and historical heritage,” Yang said.
According to data from Trip.com Group, China’s largest online travel agency, the per capita cost of domestic expeditionary travel products fell 10% this summer compared with 2019, before the pandemic, while the per capita cost of overseas expeditionary travel products increased by about 40% compared with 2019.
Summer vacation is the peak season for parent-child travel. According to the China Tourism Academy, Chinese consumers took 1.84 billion trips last summer, up significantly from the same period in 2019 and before the COVID-19 pandemic, with many tourist destinations seeing record numbers of tourists.
Based on summer travel orders so far, nearly half of tourists planning domestic trips are families with children, with this group accounting for 53 percent of all international trips, according to Trip.com.
According to Trip.com, consumers born in the 1980s and 1990s are dominating the list of people booking travel this summer, accounting for 50 percent and 18 percent, respectively.
