The Sleeping Dragon Awakes:

Abstract

China is currently experiencing stunning growth in outbound travel. This paper examines the determinants, trends and characteristics of ChinaÆs outbound travel. It finds that the recent booming economy and the resultant emergence of a middle-upper class make outbound travel financially accessible to larger sections of the population. The recent liberalization of policies and regulations from both China and its destination countries have also smoothed the way. Even so, the issuance of visas has been and still is the major barrier to ChinaÆs outbound travel. Business travel is an especially important market due to increasing international trade and investment activities between China and the rest of the world.