Chinese tier two city passengers are more inclined to visit the South East Asia region than their tier one, three and four counterparts, new air traffic analysis from m1nd-set shows.

Data from the firm’s *Business 1intelligence Service (B1S) platform in association with IATA reveals South East Asia as their preferred destination, with 40% of trips made to the region versus 25% of trips made from tier one cities, 22% from tier three cities and a mere 12% from tier four cities.

In a similiar fashion, outbound travel to North East Asian countries were far fewer from tier 1 cities at 32%, versus 42% from tier two cities, 49% from tier three cities and a significant 78% from tier four cities.

By comparison, Western Europe and North America received a higher percentage of flights from tier one Chinese cities, at 13% each, than from Hong Kong, where 9% of outbound travel was to Western Europe and 8% to North America.

Even tier three cities notched a higher percentage of outbound flights to Western Europe, at 10%.

TRAVEL HABIT DIFFERENCES

The insights underpin wider differences in chosen travel destinations between tiered cities in mainland China, alongside Hong Kong and Macau.

Predominantly, travel to domestic destinations within tier one to four cities remain most popular among the Chinese.

This compares to outbound travel from Hong Kong, where eight out of 10 trips are to foreign destinations, with just under seven out of 10 outbound trips from Macau made internationally.

Unsurprisingly, tier one cities ranked highest in terms of the percentage of foreign travel made over a 12-month period at 24%, compared to 9% from tier two cities and between 3-4% for tier three and tier four cities.

Pablo Saez Gil, Head of B1S at m1nd-set comments: “The B1S air traffic data has an unparalleled coverage when it comes to Chinese travellers. IATA’s DDS platform has not only full coverage of all tickets sold to Chinese travellers through online and offline travel agencies, but also includes all the tickets sold directly by the airlines.

“The Nationality Model developed in conjunction with IATA on top of their DDS platform, which is used by leading airlines and aircraft manufacturers, adds nationality insights to 1500 airports worldwide, enabling the duty free industry to track passengers by nationality anywhere in the world.”

“The B1S analysis also reveals country and city destinations for each origin city and tier. Gil adds: “Despite a decline in travel to Korea since the THAAD missile crisis, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Thailand are the top four destination countries across all tiers as well as from Hong Kong and Macau.”

*Based on air ticket sales over a 12-month period