Dear Destination Leaders, Those of you who’ve visited China in the past 12 months will have noticed an extraordinary thing going on with people’s wallets… there were none. In just 3 years China has all but completely transitioned into a cashless society, and it’s bloody awesome (that’s Australian for great)! China’s mobile payments totaled 81 trillion yuan ($12.77 trillion) in just the first 10 months of 2017, the world’s largest volume, as reported by the Xinhua News Agency.

Hello destination leaders, Earlier this week there was a feature in Bloomberg titled ‘Chinese Tourists Are Taking Over the Earth, One Selfie at a Time’ and in case you missed it’s a remarkable peek into China’s outbound travel segment, tipped to become $429B by 2021 (yep, that’s right!). For this week’s blog I’m going to summarize the most relevant nuggets from the article and save you the trouble. The numbers: Global tourism has always outpaced the economy, expected to have

Hello destination leaders, In case you didn’t know, it’s almost Chinese New Year and global destinations are lining up for a piece of what will be the busiest period of Chinese travel ever. Last year 6.2 million Chinese traveled abroad during CNY, this year it’s expected to be as many as 6.5 million. Needless to say, it’s the most significant period of the year, particularly for short-haul travel. Why short haul? Markets like South East Asia have beautiful weather at this tim

Anger has spread throughout the world over the recent United Airlines passenger removal scandal. Dr David Dao, who is of Vietnamese descent, was chosen, supposedly at random, and forcibly removed from an overbooked flight, which he had already paid for and boarded. China’s reaction China’s netizens have not taken this lightly. It has sparked online tempers to a whole new level, with the memory of the death of a Chinese citizen at the hands of the French police still close to

Luxurious hotels, fancy casinos, endless poolside parties: there’s probably too much fun to be had in Las Vegas – if you are over 21, that is. This city, that bloomed out of the mighty Mojave Desert, is world renown as the place for adult indulgence, and possibly least attractive to minor tourists. But let’s not talk about boring adult stuff anymore, because if under-21s know the right places to go and the right things to do, they can easily create their own unforgettable exp