By Chris Madden

December 3, 2020

“You should continue to look very seriously at the China market and understand Chinese consumer needs,” Gao Feng Advisory Founder Edward Tse told delegates.

While the travel retail sector has long revered the spending power of Chinese shoppers, Tse suggested that their strength has only grown following the pandemic.

The IMF is predicting China will buck the global trend and record positive GDP growth for 2020 and Tse says that positive economic news is reflected in the country being a rare “bright spot” for the travel industry thanks to domestic tourism.

However, he does not believe that spend will remain trapped within China, which makes understanding Chinese consumers all the more important.

How will shoppers change patterns of consumption as they travel outside of China?

“One would expect there will be more outbound travel from China to other parts of the world,” Tse reflected. “For many of your members, thinking through how many of those travel patterns will evolve over time and Chinese consumers become more mature, how will they change patterns of consumption as they travel outside of China?”