Chinese outbound tourists as international consumer in Northern Thailand

Abstract

This article examines the mindsets of independent Chinese tourists in the context of the emerging dynamic mobility perspective. It investigates Chinese tourists’ travel impulses, cross-border flows, quality-of-life perceptions, and the meaning of living a mobile lifestyle. Through face-to-face interviews and drawing on narrative descriptions in social media and newsletters, the article draws findings relating to travel motivations, the reconstruction of self, the quality-of-life mindsets, free-itinerary tour mode, and the influences of modern technology. The article aims at addressing the current development trends of Chinese outbound tourists, providing an understanding of the complex characteristics and the gradual release of Chinese outbound tourists’ cross-border mobility freedom.

Keywords

Consumption culture mobility studies Chinese outbound tourists reconstruction of self quality-of-life perception free-itinerary tours technology impact

Highlights

The research studies Chinese outbound tourists as consumers under the mobility studies’ perspective.

The research situates the Chinese outbound tourists in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand, as case study.

The current Chinese outbound tourists’ perceptions reflect dynamic new mobility trends.

For Chinese tourists, the capacity of international mobility symbolizes a sense of quality-of-life perception.

Increasing Chinese outbound tourists choose to travel with a highly flexible itinerary.

Modern technology plays an important role to promote Chinese outbound tourism.

Introduction

Since the reform and opening up policy from 1978, China has witnessed sweeping changes (CTA and CTRIP, 2013). The Chinese government has identified tourism as a strategic pillar industry (CNTA, 2016), and there has been vast social transformation, both in terms of domestic and outbound tourism. Thus, China’s outbound tourism has become a dynamic source of global tourism development (Dai et al., 2017). For instance, in 2000, the number of Chinese outbound tourists to Europe was just over one million. By 2018, this number had reached more than 6 million (Hotel and Tourism Online, 2019). Chinese tourists are the top source market for inbound tourism in many countries of Asia and beyond with the highest proportion of 31.3% of international arrivals being recorded in the Republic of Korea (CTA and CTRIP, 2018). Turning specifically to Thailand, which is the object of this article, about two decades ago, individual source markets for Thailand were from Malaysia (14.6%), Japan (13.0%), Korea (6.8%), and followed by China with 6.4% (Kontogeorgopoulos, 1998). By 2018, this had increased to 27% from China (WTTC, 2020).

Along with the growth, tourism has also changed, with the previous emphasis on sightseeing and shopping shifting to more quality-oriented tours, catering for individualized demand, by which the new generation of Chinese tourists is seeking deeper experiences in the tourist destinations (So et al., 2016). Outbound tourism has become one of the indexes for measuring the social welfare of Chinese families (Bao et al., 2019; Yang and Wu, 2014). In this respect, the dynamism of Chinese tourist mobility could serve as one measure of general societal happiness and well-being. The mass outflow of Chinese tourists has become a symbolic move to signify a Chinese sense of cosmopolitan mindsets for the individual tourist, to be in fashion, to be modern. These trends are prompting intervention and investigation by academic philosophers, sociologists, and anthropologists (Dai et al., 2017; King and Tang, 2009; Sun and Dong, 2003; Teare, 2007; Xie and Li, 2009). In the wave of innovative high-tech development, the outbound tourism industry is evolving and upgrading itself, creating political, economic, social, and cultural impacts for the tourist destinations. At the same time, modern technologies are also playing a part in influencing the tourists’ experiences (Cheng and Zhang, 2019; Law et al., 2008). The context of economic, political, cultural, and national discourse in China has shifted from policy attempts to limit mobility of its citizens to a celebration of mobility. Chinese policy makers originally set up restrictions and sought to establish global partnerships with foreign governments in order to control citizen mobility (Genova and Peutz, 2010). But from a strictly controlled and supervised country in the early stage of tourism development, the massive economic development has been accompanied by the gradual release of political restrictions with the result that China has grown into a country full of policy dynamism.

Against this background, this article seeks to examine the experience of the new generation of Chinese independent tourists in Thailand. The overall aim is to contribute to an understanding of Chinese independent outbound tourism and how it is changing in the context of broader changes in mobilities. In doing so, it sets the empirical study within the broader perspective of mobilities and uses this to understand tourist perceptions of change, the increasing free-itinerary touring mode, and the impact of modern technology. Thus, the main argument of this article is Chinese outbound tourists’ life stories elucidate the facts that Chinese outbound tourism is embedded with mobility mindsets, and the Chinese outbound tourists are subject to intrinsic investigation within the scope of mobility studies. The article begins with a consideration of mobilities and goes on to investigate the Chinese tourists’ perceptions of their transnational mobility practices and the implications of their touring behavior in Thailand, especially by the new generation of Chinese free-itinerary tourists with the support of new technologies.

Chinese outbound tourists from a mobility studies’ perspective

The new mobility turn has broadened the academic view of mobility from a narrow discipline to a much more extensive transdisciplinary and multidisciplinary field of research (Graburn, 2017). This is captured by Sheller (2014: 46) who suggests that this includes “spatial mobility of humans, non-human objects; the circulation of information, images and capitals, including critical theories of the affective and psycho-social implications of such mobilities, as well as the study of physical means for movements.” As far as tourism is concerned, this new mobility turn has prompted a wider perspective on tourists and their actions in which, for example, tourists are viewed as agents or actors in the institutional structures of bureaucracy, which consist of the modern nation-state governance. Incoming tourists will challenge and reshape the existing social structure and institutions that organize the society of the tourist destination.

Tourism anthropologists have long focused on tourist mobility, both epistemologically and methodologically. Tourists, in their mobile style, live, experience, and reflect in the course of their everyday lives. Understanding how mobile lives and mobility systems interweave and dislocate is crucial to grasping, as well as confronting, the politics of movement (Elliott and Urry, 2010). Mobility is a prime concern in the social structure and institutional processes. Complex, powerful, and interdependent knowledge-based systems constitute the mobilization of production, consumption, communications, networks, and travel around the world. Globalization advocates a release of national barriers, reducing state intervention, and freeing individual activities from the traditional hierarchical, social, and political structures, as well as a compressed world of telecommunication and new media contact.

With specific reference to China, the rapid economic increase starting from the late 1980s was accompanied by large-scale economic and social transformations, resulting in the social phenomenon of domestic and international mobility (Nyíri, 2011b). Within the scope of outbound tourism, Chinese tourists’ mobility has reflected a form of consumer culture in and out of China (Jin et al., 2020). Chinese tourists’ behaviors, their unique mode of gazing, and their differentiation from that of the Eurocentric concepts of traditional tourists have attracted academia’s attention (Hulme, 2014), and various researchers have investigated the consumption behavior, economic factors, policy formation, and the regulatory evolution of Chinese outbound tourism (Cheng and Zhang, 2019; Fugmann and Aceves, 2013; Huang et al., 2015; Li et al., 2010). At the same time, while Chinese individuals were widely encountering the world, the invisible authoritative forces became one of essential factors that Nyíri investigated in the role of the Chinese state using cultural strategies, namely, “cultural authority” (Nyíri, 2011a).

Free-itinerary Chinese outbound tourists

One of the important developments in tourism has been the emergence of a new generation of free-itinerary tourists. This has also occurred in China and showed its unique characteristics as a form of cosmopolitanism and consumerism. Such independent tourists have been extensively studied, for instance, the intrinsic nature of independent traveling (Hyde and Lawson, 2003), shifting from adolescence to adulthood via independent traveling (Schmierer and Jackson, 1998), sensation exploration (Pizam et al., 2001), gap year traveling (O’Reilly, 2006), the tourists’ sophisticated characteristics (Xiang, 2013), and international students turned independent tourists (Mei and Lantai, 2018). Again, specifically in relation to China, Xiang (2013) studied the characteristics of independent Chinese outbound tourists from five aspects: sociodemographic characteristics, motivations, decision-making processes, spatial patterns of destinations, and consuming patterns. Xiang found special characteristics of Chinese independent tourists in their spatial pattern perspectives making options about certain destinations, as well as micro-pattern perspectives, to discuss the Chinese independent outbound tourist’s distinctive characteristics to that of the group tourists. Together, these studies provide a rich background to the present study.

Other relevant recent studies have dealt with Chinese tourist’s motivation to pursue outbound touring (Hanqin and Lam, 1999; Li, 2007; Rittichainuwat et al., 2008), Chinese involvement with Thai society, notably related to assimilation and ethnicity (Bun and Kiong, 1993), alternate identity (Tong and Chan, 2001), Chinese diaspora (Barrett, 2012; Bao, 2012), exclusion and embeddedness (Rigg, 2003), and cross-cultural contact (Bun and Kiong, 1995). More generally, Keating and Kriz (2008) made a systematic review of Chinese outbound tourism studies and synthesized the destination choice process. Zhang and Peng (2014) investigated touring motivations, using Cairns, Australia, as a research site. Similarly, Ruhanen et al. (2015) explored Chinese outbound tourists’ demand for authentic and indigenous tourism experiences in Australia.

With this background, it is now timely to consider Chinese tourists’ activities and their behavior in terms of theorizing their global mobilities and looking into the embedded incumbent meaning of being a Chinese tourist traveling overseas, examining what the tourists seek, how they perceive, and what they expect. In doing this, the study is influenced by Parrinello's (1993) perspective of spatial tourism mobility as key in the modern economy.

The modern technology facilitated mobilities

The developments in tourism have of course been taking place at the same time as the transformations in modern technology, and the links between the two have been well explored in the literature. Werthner and Klein (1999) have examined the interdependence between tourism development and information technology discussing the issues for tourism value chain reformation and tourism industry management. Neuhofer and Buhalis (2014) have explored the ways in which information technology enhances tourists’ experiences, by which they compare the tourists’ experiences with three levels, each of which can be defined by different indicators. More recently, and with specific reference to China, Xu et al. (2016, 2017) have looked into the impact of social media, smartphone, and online video games in reshaping Chinese outbound tourists’ experiences. Their work reexamines the Chinese outbound tourists’ experiences via the span of mobility studies and reports them to be thoroughly reformed by the increasing impact of modern technology.

From these various perspectives, it is clear that mobile technology has been having crucial influences on the operation and the experiences of tourism worldwide. China is very much a part of this. The changes in tourism in China are intimately connected to the support and change that comes from the developments in mobile technology which has been one of the important enablers of change. It is clear that modern technologies have been playing a key part in the experiences of Chinese outbound tourists.

Methodology and research site

The field work for the research was carried out in 2019 in Chiang Mai city in Thailand. The reason this city was selected was because it had been nominated as one of the most popular destinations for Chinese outbound tourists (Iszatt, 2013; Panyaarvudh, 2018; Sangkakorn, 2013), induced in part by the blockbuster film Lost in Thailand, a comedy which deals with the experiences of two Chinese tourists in Thailand. This is thought to have contributed to a significant increase of Chinese tourists in the destination (Mostafanezhad and Promburom, 2018).

The aim of the research was to investigate the Chinese tourists’ own reflective perceptions of being Chinese tourists themselves, to uncover the implicit meaning to them of being a Chinese tourist, as well as to understand the perceived psychological impact on themselves. This is noted by Denzin and Lincoln (1998: 317) as storytelling by individuals. Based on a grounded theory approach (Birks and Mills, 2011; Bryant, 2017; Oktay, 2012), the empirical work reported here has 20 semi-structured face-to-face interviews (referring to Goodson and Phillimore, 2004; Hammersley, 1995; Mason, 2017). To provide further insights into the analysis, the data from these interviews were supplemented by information from newspapers and online travelogues in popular websites, Mafengwo, Ctrip, and Tianya. The prime focus was to find out the characteristics of the new generation of free-itinerary tourists from China. The interviews were conducted by the lead researcher. A copy of the interview schedule is attached in the Supplementary Material. In brief, the questions related to demographic information, decision-making process, destination impressions, personal travel experiences, itinerary in the city, and perceptions of change before, during, and after the visit. The interviews were conducted in Chinese and recorded. Subsequently, transcriptions were prepared by research assistants and translated into English by the lead researcher. The English transcripts then were coded and categorized into different themes and signifiers of meanings and subjected to a discourse analytical process by the lead researcher. The findings were grouped into the three main themes that address the focus of this research: personal perceptions on life change and on self, the free traveling mode, and the influences of technology.

Given the anticipated difficulties of securing one-hour interviews with mobile tourists, four locations were selected for the interviews. These were the main tourist attractions for Chinese visitors, namely, Nimmanhaemin Road, the Maya shopping mall, and Tha Pae Gate, as well as the Warorot fresh market. For the first, the specific location was a hostel in which the lead researcher did volunteering work; the Maya lifestyle shopping center is also at the entrance to Nimmanhaemin Road; for the Tha Pae Gate in the old city, the location was the adjacent popular coffee shop. The researcher randomly approached potential interviewees and invited them to take part in a semi-structured interview. A total of 47 potential interviewees were approached. For 11 of them, their itineraries were arranged by travel agencies. These were interviewed to provide a comparison with the free-itinerary tourists. 16 independent travelers declined the invitation to participate. So, a total of 20 interviews with independent travelers were successfully completed each lasting between 1 and 2 h.

Findings

The following focuses on the new features of the current generation of Chinese tourists exploring the implications within the new mobility paradigm.

Finding 1: Implicit new embeddedness of being “a Chinese tourist”

Chinese outbound tourists have become a signifier of an almost compulsive psychological urge to self-reinvent—to make “being Chinese” mean something new (Smith, 2011; Wolfgang, 2013). Chinese outbound tourism development has witnessed a shift from sedentarism to nomadism. China’s capacity for learning, adaptation, and innovation, together with an unmatched scale effect thanks to the size of the population, has produced immense internal and external impacts (Zhang, 2012). China’s rapid progress in such areas as tourism, the automobile industry, the Internet, high-speed trains, and urbanization has demonstrated this scale effect. Chinese tourist’s personal story explores the transforming nature of occupations, personal identity formation, and life strategies, which demonstrate various transformations that are explained with several elaborations (Elliott and Urry, 2010). Even though the duration of their stay in Thailand was short, their appearance in the Thailand territory signified their embedded meanings of being tourists. These implications can be exemplified in the following two points: reconstruction of self and quality-of-life mindsets.

To de-exoticize Thailand and to reconstruct self through traveling consumption

In the studies of outbound tourists’ motivations, there are many pull attributes related to destination attractiveness, including nature, infrastructure, tourist leisure activities, arts, cultural attractions, as well as the atmosphere elements (Correia et al., 2007). Among these factors, mystic destinations with exotic flavor, for instance, Thailand, provide some distinctive attractions. For Chinese outbound tourists, the uniqueness of this exotic flavor as noted by Keating and Kriz (2008, p. 39) reveals the “complexities in destination choice within a non-Western setting.” For the Chinese tourists to Chiang Mai, Thailand, this destination is a wonderland place full of myths and exotic cultures. The increasing host–guest interaction serves to de-exoticize and demystify both sides of the cultural clusters (Hutton, 2018). To most of the Chinese tourists to Thailand, the initial attractiveness is merely to explore the exotic culture, to seek for differences. In the studies of cultural sociology, seeking for authenticity refers to a series of destination virtues, as Grazian (2010, p. 191) has proposed: “credibility, originality, sincerity, naturalness, genuineness, innateness, purity or realness.” Spending some time in an exotic and mysterious land helps the Chinese tourists to demystify their long-term expectations.

To go abroad to Thailand, we are so dazzled with the strangeness of Thailand’s cultural scenery and its authentic exoticness. The most attractive thing for me is probably the expectation for a different cultural experience. The world is so big that I want to go for a tour. We are coming to Thailand to experience the life of a different country, different language, different culture, different customs, and different foods, which give us a sense of enlightening freshness. That is the real essence of travelling (one of four women traveling together with a highly flexible itinerary from Nanning, China, aged 29 years).

Another extensively discussed motivation for traveling to Thailand is to reconstruct oneself in the atmosphere of otherness (Quintana, 2015). Existential authenticity, as proposed by Kontogeorgopoulos (2017), is the driving factor for the tourists to find themselves and to discover others, and both intrapersonal and interpersonal communications are existing between the tourists and the locals, all of which serve as capitals to reconstruct their sense of Chinese identity and the perception of self. Experience of foreign culture to the Chinese tourists equals a way to reconstruct self. One of the informants made the following comments on self-reconstructing:

Some people might say travelling to Thailand is to broaden the personal horizons and increase your life experience. In fact, the purpose of travelling here in Chiang Mai is to relax, make ourselves escape from the day-to-day routine, and seek physical and mental pleasure, to regain the true Self. Therefore, the essence of Thailand travel should be completely relaxed, thus, to reconstruct our own lives all the way through this tour (a father aged 42 years, on a family trip with his wife and two children).

Quality-of-life mindsets of the Chinese outbound tourists

Previous scholars from both Eastern and Western societies have eloquently enriched the academic interpretation of the benefits of traveling for the quality of life (Driver et al., 1991; Uysal et al., 2012). Mobilizing life means a person’s life would be involved in enticing, unexpected, and extensive possibilities, by which the tourists themselves could be improved with generic skills. A life “on the move” is one with the uncertainties of delayed and unpredictable journeys, and regular separation from family and neighbors, in which the tourists would face flexibilities (Byrnes, 2001), cultural encounters (Desforges, 2000), language acquisition (Oddou et al., 2000), risk management, and leadership capacity building (Hunt, 2000). One of the informants elucidated her traveling to Chiang Mai city as:

The purpose of our trip to Chiang Mai was to relax and fulfill my annual dream of being an overseas traveler, bring my family with me. My life is not yet fulfilled since I am not satisfied with my everyday routine. I am content with my capacity to bring my family for overseas travelling experiences from time to time, which help me to form a sense of “fulfillment,” unfolding more possibilities in life and fostering closer relationships with my travel mates, my family members, and realizing more important roles of myself in the family relationships (a mother of a 4-year-old boy, with her husband and son, together with another family member. The interview was conducted in a coffee shop, while her husband and the boy were at the Tha Pae Gate feeding pigeons).

A life on the move, based on free will, could serve as a fundamental indicator of “quality-of-life” (Uysal et al., 2012). That was the feedback narrated by the feeling of “self-fulfillment” as well as “realization” of life dreams, as manifested in our interviewees’ personal life stories. In this regard, the lifestyle change of Chinese outbound tourists forms a significant representation of “quality-of-life.” This contrasts with what has long been described in academic and other literature as the traditional mode of package group traveling by Chinese outbound tourists (Chang et al., 2020; Lim and Wang, 2008; Wang et al., 2013). In short, the Chinese are not only traveling but many of them are traveling independently. As Wolfgang (2006, 2013) has pointed out, China has entered a second wave, and this new era has witnessed a shift from package group travel to independently organized tours, from photo-and-go sightseeing tours to experiential seeking travel, to live a brand-new lifestyle (Li, 2015; So et al., 2016; Xiang, 2013). As Seligman (2004) suggests, authentic happiness requires a new positive psychology approach to realize a potentially lasting fulfillment. The new generation of Chinese tourists bears these virtues and distinctive features to pursue authentic happiness during the course of touring in an exotic culture. The most distinctive characteristic of these tourists is to balance quality-of-life considerations, which include nature appreciation, family time, free choices, slow-paced life, as well as local community interactions (Ateljevic and Doorne, 2000; Marcketti et al., 2006). Going abroad, to some Chinese tourists, is one of life’s goals, and it is prudent to realize that fulfilling this goal would be enhancing the satisfaction and psychological happiness, and thus, according to Sirgy (2010), it enhances the quality-of-life perceptions of the tourists.

Finding 2: The emerging free-itinerary traveling mode of Chinese tourists in Thailand

Tourists with flexible itineraries have been studied with indicators of how much they have gained from these experiences (Noy, 2004; Pearce and Foster, 2007). One of the typical Chinese tourists traveling as an independent traveler in northwestern Thailand elaborated herself as follows:

I am a Chinese free literary traveler to Chiang Mai, Thailand. I am now a Nanning-based office lady in one real estate company. Like many new generation youngsters from China, I am constantly confronted with my professional and personal commitments. My daily routines do not include too many business trips. To compensate for my boring clerking works, I decided to go for a leisure tour with three of my peer girlfriends. Even though our language capacities are extremely limited, we could be able to facilitate with our digit dictionary and mobile translating applications. It is my third time to be a free itinerary traveler to an overseas destination since 2016, first to Malaysia, the second and third trips to Thailand (a young woman aged 25 years, working in a real estate company as a sales person).

Taking the process of releasing freedom of mobility as a disciplinary consideration, we could draw a series of analytical outcomes. The image of the tourist as a self-educating explorer, self-bettering sportsman, or romantic flâneur (Birkerts, 1982), characteristic of the Western evolution of tourism, seems not to be relevant to Chinese cultural history and was not accessible to fledgling Chinese tourists in the 1990s (Nyíri, 2011a). Historical continuity, ethnicization of national geography, and the internalization of modern concepts, as well as the inextricably intertwined idiosyncratic perceptions and connotations, were the unique features and characteristics of the Chinese outbound tourists (Xiang, 2013).

The personal schedule of travel reveals a trend of individualized mobility, which is intricately woven within a complicated network of societal, cultural, and economic networking systems. Thailand was one of the first destinations approved in 1988 under the Approved Destination Status implemented by the central government of China, providing a quasi-bilateral agreement for simpler visa application procedures (Arita et al., 2012; Peleggi, 1996; Untong et al., 2015). The bilateral trade and economic investment increase has between cocreated by both China and Thailand (Zhu and Siriphon, 2019), which witnessed a large number of Chinese diasporas in Thailand (Santasombat, 2019). In turn, the large number of Chinese overseas (second/third generation of Chinese migrants) has strong connections with the people from Mainland China. In return, these strong connections also facilitate the Chinese outbound tourists’ visits. The efforts of one of the participant’s visit to look for associates in Chiang Mai demonstrated the networking linkages of Chinese tourists that facilitate and bring convenience to their travels.

This visit I am coming to visit my friend’s family who migrated here in Chiang Mai a couple of years ago. She is now accompanying her son, who transferred to study in an international school in Chiang Mai city. I am pleased to have her here to facilitate my visit. Her city introduction provided a localized vision for me (a couple whose visit was to allow their child to attend a one-week summer camp in Prem Tinsulanonda International School. In the meantime, they were visiting their friends).

These forms of traveling extensively exist in the current Chiang Mai tourism market, especially with Chinese outbound tourists. The network capital found among the Chinese tourists ensures a higher level of mobilizing power that distinguishes them from those people termed as “immobile,” in terms of cultural, economic, and symbolic capital (Pellegrino, 2016). They obviously had higher levels of education or stronger powers of consumption for commodities in the destination market (Hendriyani, 2018). Armed with these competitive edges, the following interviewee’s comment demonstrates a variety and diversity of multiple forms of mobilizing power—actual, imaginary as well as virtual—that serve as a key indicator for social recognition, level of self-esteem, interpersonal respect, or social prestige. As the interviewee puts it,

The reason for me to choose this free itinerary way of traveling was because of my working experience as a travel industry itinerary operator and tour guide before I worked in my current position. I am an outward person and my working experiences in the tourism industry helped me to grow stronger. Comparing to the agency organized traditional group tourism, being described as a bounded itinerary, restricted and shopping-oriented, I prefer the ‘self-service’ independent travelling, by self-arranging air-ticket, hotel and vehicles (a 30-year-old man with a tattoo on his left hand and a Buddhism proverb from Buddhism sacred script in Thai on the center of his neck).

As was observed by Tsaur et al. (2010), there is a popular trend in contemporary tourism, which is termed as independent tourist. Similarly, compared to a tour package of the traditional Chinese tourists, there are more and more free-itinerary tours organized by Chinese tourists themselves. Following this trend, the shopping information gathering, the characteristics of purchasing, and the commodity focus are also intrinsically altered. One of the informants also mentioned the comparison between package tours with free-itinerary tours,

If you want to go to as many spots as possible to check in for a limited time, there is an advantage to the group. It’s really cheap to travel with a tour group. Go to these attractions and take a photo, then we can go. If the travel agency takes care of all local transportation, tickets, hotels, it saves lots of money and time for us. The only problem is the shopping schedules. If we don’t buy anything in the shopping venues they arranged, it is definitely cheaper with the group. As for me, I prefer my own arrangements and my free time. I would love to make full use of my leisure time in Thailand (a couple aged 47 and 45 years who have lots of experiences in traveling overseas interviewed in the Maya lifestyle shopping center).

These comments suggest that at least for some, the Chinese tourists’ dependence on tour agency service has been decreasing due to the increasing technology advancement in the modern tourism sectors, which is illustrated in the following sections.

Finding 3: The role of modern technology in the Chinese outbound tourists’ destination consumption

Modern technology enables Chinese tourists visiting elsewhere independently to still keep the capacity to remain closely connected with their original roots, with flexibility, adaptability, and reflexivity. Modern technology has profoundly altered the Chinese outbound tourists’ imaginaries, the travel motivations, and their perceptions over the authenticity of tourism consumption experiences. For instance, technological readiness relates to both the source market and the destination (Wang et al., 2017). Hardy et al. (2017) tracked the influences of the complexity of mobile phone–based technology and information communication technologies’ adaptation to the tourism industry. To the Chinese tourists, modern smartphone technology has enhanced the travel intentions and the usage of photography and information exchange (Cahyanto et al., 2013; Chang et al., 2016; Li et al., 2017). We interviewed the Chinese tourists at a non-tourist site in an extremely local market where the local farmers gather to do wholesale business:

My understanding about Warorot farmer’s market comes from software on my mobile phone, which is named the Little Red Book, a reputational application similar to Tripadvisor.com. I learned lots of interesting things about this local market, like the cultural, historical, humanitarian, scenic areas as well as the ethnicity features. I would like to term my exploration of this local market as “exploring authentic experiences.” In my understanding, I believe that is truly the essence of travelling (a young woman aged 25 years, seeking authentic local life experience in the local market, learned about via mobile phone software).

Modern technology plays an influential role in modern travel management and provides extensive information necessary for independent travel for Chinese tourists (Liu et al., 2015; Lu et al., 2015). For consumers back in China, the increasing combination of online and offline business in the travel and tourism sector has drastically increased the consumption demand and has reshaped consumer behavior (Law et al., 2008; Li and Buhalis, 2006; Mamaghani, 2009). For their counterparts in Thailand on the production side, there are also phenomenal advances in terms of conceptive mobile technology (Erawan, 2016) and the application of the technology acceptance model on health tourism (Connell, 2013; Moghavvemi et al., 2017; Phatthana and Mat, 2011). One of the informants expressed this as follows:

Considering that it is my second time to Chiang Mai, Thailand, we started with Internet application using “Baidu” search engine for detailed information. The information from the software helped us digging into and gaining sufficient knowledge of our tourist destinations. By typing in the destination name like Bangkok, Puket, Pataya or Chiang Mai, a list of detailed information about local scenic spots, local specialties, humanitarian backgrounds would be shown from the application. That is the reason why I can travel independently without sufficient English proficiency. My flight ticket to Chiang Mai this time was booked via a local ticket agency, which provided air ticket booking and detailed Chiang Mai Free Itinerary Instruction documents. The hotel booking for this trip was done via booking.com (Chinese version). What’s more, I purchased my happy card (a mobile sim card provided by AIS Thailand) via Taobao.com (a young couple from Shenzhen city, China, aged 30 and 29 years).

The mobile phone software that they used was the transforming platform for facilitating their traveling as “free-itinerary” tourists. The reshaping of the self through engagement with increasingly complex, computerized systems turns life toward the short-term, the episodic, bits of scattered information, slices of sociality (Elliott and Urry, 2010). The fast-reforming digital world keeps changing the complexity of life. An informant from our interviews expressed the view as follows:

For scheduling my itinerary, managing and sorting through our accommodations and checking scenic spots, I applied a variety of digital devices and technologies. The mobile phone I am using is iPhone X, and I purchased a digital service AIS happy card via Taobao, which serves for 7 days data-free. The software that we used for preparing and facilitating this trip include: Wechat, Alipay, Taobao, Google map, Apple map, Dazhong Dianping, Weibo, Little Red Book, Feichangzhun, Grab, and Flying Pig, etc. The software included the social media, banking software, comments and recommendation platforms, mapping and transportation applications related to flight and taxi, etc (two free-itinerary women who are studying in one university in Zhejiang, China, visiting Chiang Mai as a graduation celebration).

For some of the interviewees, languages are no longer obstacles for transnational mobility for Chinese outbound tourists. Language barriers are not at all troublesome since the Baidu, Google, and Xunfei translation software could be serving as very efficient communicative facilitators exemplifying the impact and facilitation of modern technology to the transnational tourism industry. To these Chinese tourists, the symbolic meaning of technology signifies the increasing quality and transformation of lives.

Conclusion and discussion

The article elaborates the applicability of a mobility studies’ perspective for Chinese outbound tourists. Trying to reach a successful configuration of mobility studies on Chinese outbound tourism and tourist perceptions of change, performativity, the increasing free-itinerary touring mode, and the impact of modern technology, the article investigates from both the macro and micro perspectives to understand the Chinese outbound tourists’ perceptions of transnational demystifying efforts, as well as their perceptions of quality-of-life mindsets, which have long been exemplified in their cross-border traveling. The article has firstly considered the identification of “being” Chinese outbound tourists, as well as the tourists’ behavior and practices, under the framework of mobility studies. Similar to Ateljevic and Doorne’s findings, when we look into the visions of Chinese outbound tourists, we find that their perceptions of understanding the world have some unique features (Ateljevic and Doorne, 2000). Being an international outbound tourist is a demonstration for the Chinese of living a modern social life, an elaboration of modernity. It helps to redefine the meaning of life and builds up esteem identities in their outbound tourism practices. Consumerism preoccupies and is also overwhelming in the Chinese outbound tourist’s practices at this phase of development. For the moment, outbound tourism is positively deemed as deep-rooted in the idea of mobility, quality-of-life, work–life balance, a form of relative freedom, as well as a temporary escape from confined space and time in their daily routine. More importantly, Chinese outbound tourism and tourists are exploring the world with their eyes of curiosity, for an educational, exploring, leisure, and pleasure-seeking purpose, and fundamentally, to reconstruct self via outbound touring experiences.

One of the limitations of this article is that it really only focuses on the agent perspective, studying the individual Chinese tourists’ perceptions. This of course misses out a broader perspective involving, among others, the tourism industry, and the government as well as views on important issues of local residents and the media, for example, on the reported “uncivilized” behavior of Chinese tourists. Viewed from the Chinese outbound tourism industry and taking a macro perspective, we can see the Chinese government’s shift from sedentarism of “bounded territorial units,” “an industry to be strictly controlled” (Cresswell, 2006), to view tourism via the perspective of nomadism. The metaphysics of sedentarism is a way of thinking and acting that sees mobility as suspicious, as threatening, and as a potential social problem that needs to be under strict surveillance. The emerging popularity of Chinese outbound tourism could be seen as a manifestation of nomadic metaphysics. Freedom, absolute right of human mobility and the accompanying rise of modern citizenship for free mobility, has gradually become the infinite, restless entanglement of Chinese citizens, especially within the commercialized, mercantile neo-capitalism context. Meanwhile, the gradual popularity of transborder tourism and group tourism has signaled the modernization and modernity of mobility features—the origin of the modern voyagers, especially the younger Chinese outbound travelers, facilitated by the increasing influence of modern technology. While under the new paradigm to see through the lens of nomadic metaphysics, everything is in motion, and stability is illusory (Cresswell, 2006). Further studies are suggested that take a broader approach to the shifts identified here to witness the historically progressive outcomes that have followed the tremendous economic growth over the past 40 years of reform and opening up policy in China.

Supplemental Material

sj-pdf-1-joc-10.1177_1469540521994318 – Supplemental Material for Chinese outbound tourists as international consumer in Northern Thailand—A dynamic mobility perspective

Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-joc-10.1177_1469540521994318 for Chinese outbound tourists as international consumer in Northern Thailand—A dynamic mobility perspective by Jin-Sheng (Jason) Zhu, David Airey and Aranya Siriphon in Journal of Consumer Culture

Footnotes

Acknowledgement

This research article is part of a Ph.D. dissertation in Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University, Thailand, entitled Chinese Outbound Tourism and Alternative Modernity: A Reflexive Study of Chinese Transnational Tourists in Thailand.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The paper was financially supported by the Faculty of Social Sciences of Chiang Mai University, Thailand Research Fund (TRF) (RDG 6110030). It is also supported by the National Fund of Philosophy and Social Science of China (17BJY150) and Guilin Tourism University-China ASEAN Research Center (2018DMYB02).

ORCID iD

Jin-Sheng (Jason) Zhu

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Author Biographies

Jin-Sheng Zhu is a lecturer in the Belt and Road International School, Guilin Tourism University. He is currently a Ph. D. candidate in Faculty of Social Sciences in Chiang Mai University, Thailand. His primary research interests are tourists’ mobility, ASEAN tourism strategy studies, and Chinese outbound tourism.

David Airey is an emeritus professor of University of Surrey, a UNWTO Ulysses Laureate, a fellow of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism, and an honorary fellow of the Council for Australasian Tourism and Hospitality Education.

Aranya Siriphon is currently an associate professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University, Thailand. Her primary research interests are border and transborder studies, media and journalism studies, and the new wave of Chinese migrants and mobility in Mainland Southeast Asia.

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