Travel Motivations of Chinese Tourists to Egypt

Transcription

1 Travel Motivations of Chinese Tourists to Egypt Tamer Hamdy Ayad 1, Ye Shujun 2 Abstract The rapid growth of China s outbound tourism market has attracted a great deal of attention in recent years. However, the academic literature is still sparse in this area. Although the long relation between Egypt and China, and the great variety of Egyptian tourism products, Egypt get a small market share from the Chinese outbound tourism market. The authors through this paper presents an analysis for the pull and push travel motivation which affect the Chinese traveler decision to travel for tourism. This analysis will highlight on important travel motivations for Chinese and give a helping hand to the Egyptian decision makers to assess and rebuild the Egyptian Tourism Marketing Strategy towards Chinese Market. Key Words Push Motivations, Pull Motivations, China's outbound tourism. I. INTRODUCTION HINA has the potential to become one of the world s Cgreat tourism economies. This follows the opening of its markets to the outside world and its entry into mainstream economic and political circles such as the World Trade Organization [19]. China produced the second largest amount (absolute terms) of Travel & Tourism Economy GDP in 2010 after USA with the amount of US$ billion [20]. By end of 2010 China enters the top three countries of international tourism's top spenders, and ranked as the third country after Germany and USA. AS million Chinese travelers spent the amount of US$ 54.9 billion in China has shown by far the fastest growth with regard to expenditure on international tourism in the last decade, multiplying expenditure four times since 2000 [16]. The China's outbound tourism is growing exponentially within the last few years, and the Chinese travelers are fast becoming one of the tourism industry s major segment growth opportunities. So all international tourism destinations are keen to understand how adapting to meet the needs of this new market to get more share for the short and long term [11]. so the purpose of this paper is to analyze the push and pull motivations of the outbound Chinese travelers which affect their travel decision to travel to Egypt to give a guidance to increase Egypt's share from this market. II. CHINA'S OUTBOUND MARKET Given the significance of the Chinese outbound market, it is very important for the tourism organizations to develop informed strategies to exploit this opportunity to get a big share from this market. Recently, there has been a call for all researchers, organizations and institutes to study the buying behavior, traveling patterns, holiday preferences, and accommodation needs of the Chinese market [3]. Presently, the academic literature in this area is sparse and provides a little guidance on the decision-making processes of the Chinese outbound tourists, or what and how is the best way to service this market [10]. In 1990s, The leisure travel market for Chinese was opened up for the first time, when the government allowed to the Chinese residents to travel for the purpose of leisure to Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand for the first time. Before this period, the outbound travel was permitted for government business and visiting relatives overseas only. Within the 1990s, the outbound travel from China was gradually liberalized, with an increase in the number of the approved leisure travel destinations by the Chinese government, reduced the waiting times for the private passport, and the increased foreign exchange limits [8]. The Chinese outbound tourism market has seen explosive growth and grew at an average rate of close to 20% per year. China s outbound, which increased by 20.4% to million tourists in 2010, is projected to rise by 13% to 64.5 million tourists in 2011 and to million tourists in In 2010, China incurred US$54.9 billion on international tourism expenditure and ranked Asia s top source market. In the first half of 2011, China s international tourism expenditure totaled US$33.1 billion. In the first 9 months of 2011, China s outbound totaled 51.0 million, up 20% [17]. Figure (I) presents the growth of Inbound, Outbound and Domestic tourism in China from 1995 till FIGURE (I) GROWTH OF INBOUND, OUTBOUND AND DOMESTIC TOURISM IN CHINA Tamer Hamdy Ayad is with School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiaotong University. (phone: , ayadtamer@hotmail.com) Ye Shujun is is with School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiaotong University. ( shjye@bjtu.edu.cn) Source: China National Tourism Administration,

2 In 2010, China s outbound travel agents could organize tour groups to 110 overseas destinations with ADS (Approved Destinations Status) [9]. There have been 142 countries and districts opened as effected ADS destinations to Chinese citizen, only 112 of them carried out till July,2012 [2]. Figure (II) shows the China approved destinations status till July,2010. FIGURE (II) CHINA APPROVED DESTINATIONS STATUS TILL JULY,2010 Source: China National Tourism Administration, 2011 In 2010, Chinese spent US$50 billion in Europe on luxury goods, which was 4 times what mainland Chinese spent in the same year, from the World Luxury Association. In 2010, 0.79 million mainland China tourists traveled abroad via cruises, up 20.1%. Annually around 60,000 Chinese went abroad for healthcare services, especially for cancer screening and treatment for chronic diseases. In 2010, there were 150 million driving license holders in China, and China s car rental industry had a turnover of RMB18.2 billion [9]. Most of Chinese travelers like to travel with a package trip, this is due the requirements of the ADS, and because of majority of Chinese outbound visitors can t speak English, so language barriers keep them to remain in the group with the guide and interpreter, which is the best way for them to avoid language barrier and to help them to face the stranger environment, also the package trip is cheaper than individual trip, which attract Chinese outbound traveler to use it [18]. In accordance to Ref. [4] the report of Tourism Flow Outbound China, the travel patterns for Chinese outbound travelers in 2009 are illustrated in the following Figure (III). III. CHARACTERISTICS OF CHINESE OUTBOUND TOURISTS Most of Chinese tourists prefer to join tours that take them to multiple destinations when considering price and time of their trip. Chinese travelers would like to feel that they get the most in way of experiences for their money. Chinese travelers typically expend large amounts of money on shopping in the destinations they visit. In fact over half of all Chinese tourists state that shopping expenses make up the majority of their expenses while traveling. This is partially due to the gift giving culture in China. Chinese that go out of the country often purchase gifts for their entire extended family and friends. It is seen as a status symbol to wear popular foreign brands from abroad and to give them as gifts [6]. IV. SHARE OF EGYPT FROM CHINA'S OUTBOUND MARKET According to the published figures of UNWTO and Egyptian Ministry of Tourism, the share of Egypt from the China's Outbound Market doesn't commensurate with the long relation between Egypt and China, the great diversity of Egyptian tourism products, and the Large size of the outbound tourism market of China. As the number to Chinese tourists to Egypt in 2008 was tourist, then a drop in 2009 with only tourists, and tourists in Even with the significant increase in the number of tourists in 2010, the Chinese tourists only represented % 0,7 from the number of tourists arrival to Egypt, and only % 15 from the number of tourist arrival from Asia [13]. The following table number (1) presents the number of Chinese tourists arrival to Egypt, and table number (2) presents China share of arrivals from Asia and its share from World arrivals to Egypt. TABLE I NUMBER OF CHINESE TOURISTS TO EGYPT. Year Number of Chinese Tourists Source: Egyptian Ministry of Tourism,2010 TABLE II NUMBER OF TOURISTS FROM ASIA AND WORLD AND CHINA'S SHARE. Year Nr. of Tourists from Asia Share of China 11% 2.27% 15% from Asia Nr. of Tourists from World Share of China from World 0.527% 0.1% 0.721% Source: Egyptian Ministry of Tourism,2010 Fig 3.Travel Patterns Of Chinese Outbound Travelers 2009 Source: Euromonitor International, V. TRAVEL MOTIVATION FORCES The tourist motivation is defined as a global integrating network of various biological and cultural forces, which 105

3 gives value and direction to the travel choices, behavior and experience [14]. Motivation has various aspects as psychological, biological, social aspects. Motivation associated with internal and external forces, which show how tourists are pushed by motivation variables and how they are pulled by destination attributes to take the travel decision at the end [15]. The push factors are used to explain the desire of a person to go for tourism, while the pull factors are used to explain the selection of destination [5]. The push and pull factors theory states that people are firstly pushed by the internal factors or emotional factors such as the need to escape, to relax, for adventure, for knowledge and so on. After they already pushed by internal factors, they are pulled by external factors such as the natural, the outdoor activities, the historical attractions and so on [1]. Ref. [21] stated that each tourist destination offers various tourism products and services to attract tourists to visit it. it is very important for the destination stakeholders to know the reasons which drive tourists to choose or not choose their destination. So the analysis of tourist motivation is considered as attempts to extend the theoretical and empirical evidence on the causal relationship among the push and pull motivations. The marketing planners are interested to understand why people choose a particular destinations, in order to improve the income from tourism industry and to determine marketing segments [7]. The analysis of the motivation factors could reveal the mechanism in which people set goals for the choice of their destination, and how these goals are reflected in their final destination choice and their travel behavior. Also this analysis of the tourists motivation factors could provide the tourism planners, tour operators, and other stakeholders and decision makers with a better understanding of the needs, goals and expectations of the tourists. such an understanding is very important to enhance the creation of the travel products to meet with the needs and expectations of tourists [12]. VI. METHODOLOGY To identify the push and pull motivations of the Chinese tourists to Egypt, a survey among the Chinese tourists had been conducted using a questionnaire. This questionnaire consists of three parts, first part survey about the personal and demographic factors, second part about the push motivation for Chinese to visit Egypt, and third part about the pull motivation for Chinese to visit Egypt. For the push and pull motivations parts, the five-point Likert scales were using within the questionnaire, ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). then a pilot test was undertaken to examine the planned measures of those variables were meaningful to respondents or not. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences "SPSS" computer software was used to analyze the collected data by the closed questionnaire about the push and pull motivations which affect the decision of the Chinese traveler to travel to Egypt or not. VII. ANALYSIS AND RESULTS The following Table (III) presents the sociodemographic background of the sample of 234 respondents for this research. Males represent ( %53 ) of the sample and Females represent (%47 ) of the sample. Most respondents of the sample were married ( %74 ). %78 of respondents ages were between 21 years and 40 years. Around half of the respondents of the samples are working as company employees with the percentage of (%55.6), Government Officer (% 10.2), Technicians (% 7.7), Business Owner (%5.1), Students (%18.4),. In terms of annual income (%64.9) earns between RMB 40,000 and RMB 50,000. The majority of the respondents (%96.2) mentioned that this is the first visit to Egypt, and (%3.4) mentioned that they visited Egypt one time before, and (%0.4) mentioned that they visited Egypt two time before, and no one had visited Egypt more than 2 times before. TABLE III SOCIO-DEMOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS OF THE SAMPLE Variables Frequency % Gender: - Male - Female Marital Status: - Married - Single - Widower Age: - Less than 20 Years Years Years. - Over 60 Years. Occupation: - Government Officer. - Company Employee. - Business Owner. - Technicians. - Student. - Housewife. - Retired Variables Frequency % Annual Income: - Less than RMB 40,000 - RMB 40,001 RMB 50,000 - RMB 50,001 RMB 60,000 - RMB 60,001 RMB 70,000 - RMB 70,001 RMB 80,000 - More than RMB 80, Number of visit to Egypt: - First Visit. - One time before. - Two times before. - More than two times % 53 % 47 % 74 % 26 % 0 % 16.2 % 77.8 % 4.7 % 1.3 % 10.2 % 55.6 % 5.1 % 7.7 % 18.4 % % 10.7 % 64.9 % 12.4 % 9.4 % 0.9 % 1.7 % 96.2 % 3.4 % 0.4 % 0 To identify the push motivations of the Chinese tourists to travel, the survey questionnaire contains of a list of 15 different push motivations, such as desire to know about other cultures, the desire to have new life experience, relaxation, social interaction, searching new business 106

4 opportunities, escape from daily life and so on. The survey respondents had been asked to rank their motivations on a 5-point Likert scale, starting with strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). The analysis of Push Motivations using the SPSS software presents that the most important four push motives for Chinese traveler to travel abroad, which scored above 4.0 on the five-point Likert scale were to know about other cultures ( Mean Rank 4.26 ), escape from daily routine life ( Mean Rank 4.22 ), searching new business opportunities ( Mean Rank 4.22 ), and meet with new people ( Mean Rank 4.12 ). Table number (IV) presents the most important mean score of push motivations as perceived by Chinese Outbound Travelers: TABLE IV THE MEAN SCORE OF PUSH MOTIVATIONS AS PERCEIVED BY CHINESE OUTBOUND TRAVELERS Item Mean Know about other cultures 4.26 Escape from daily routine life 4.22 Searching new business opportunities 4.22 Meet with new people 4.12 Enjoy Shopping 3.92 Relaxation 3.80 To identify the pull motivations of the Chinese tourists to Egypt, the survey questionnaire contains of a list of 15 different pull motivations, such as Egyptian Pyramids, Historical Sites, Beautiful Beaches, Nile Cruises, Kind People, Theme Parks, Reliable Weather, Safety, Night Life, Variety of Food, Variety of sightseeing tours and so on. The survey respondents had been asked to rank their motivations on a 5-point Likert scale, starting with strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). The analysis of Pull Motivations using the SPSS software presents that the most important five push motives for Chinese traveler to travel to Egypt, which scored above 4.0 on the five-point Likert scale were The Egyptian Pyramids ( Mean Rank 4.25 ), Nile Cruises ( Mean Rank 4.24 ), Historical Sites ( Mean Rank 4.22 ), Business Opportunities ( Mean Rank 4.20 ), and Safety ( Mean Rank 4.12 ). Table number (V) presents the most important mean score of pull motivations to Egypt as perceived by Chinese Outbound Travelers: TABLE V THE MEAN SCORE OF PULL MOTIVATIONS AS PERCEIVED BY CHINESE OUTBOUND TRAVELERS Item Mean The Egyptian Pyramids 4.25 Nile Cruises 4.24 Historical Sites 4.22 Business Opportunities 4.20 Safety 4.12 Beautiful Beaches 3.94 Reliable Weather 3.85 Variety of sightseeing tours 3.53 VIII. CONCLUSION From the previous discussion, Could see that the understanding of traveler s behavior enhance the effectiveness of marketing activities. One of the most important variables explaining traveler behavior is motivation and that study found some interesting results for the outbound Chinese travelers. this paper presents a significant contribution to the understanding of push and pull motivations which affect the choice of travel for the outbound Chinese travelers, which will help the decision makers, planners, and marketers in Egypt to build the marketing strategy for Egypt towards the Chinese outbound tourism market to maximize market share. REFERENCES [1] Baloglu, S. and Uysal, M., (1996), "Market Segment of Push and Pull Motivation: a Canonical Correlation Approach", International journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 8 (3), [2] China National Tourism Administration, (2011), [Online]. Retrieved May 12,2011, from: [3] DITR, (2005), " National Tourism Emerging Markets Strategy: China and India ", Canberra, Australian Government: Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources. [4] Euromonitor Internation, (2010), Tourism Flows Outbound in Hong Kong and China. [5] Goossens, C., (2000), " Tourism information and pleasure motivation ", Annals of Tourism Research, 27(2), [6] Guo, Y., Kim, S. S., & Timothy, D. J. (2007). Development Characteristics and Implications of Mainland Chinese Outbound Tourism. Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, 12 (4), pp [7] Hanafiah, M. H. M et al, (2008), " Malaysian Tourists Motivation Towards Outbound Tourism ", University of Technology MARA, Selangor, Malaysia. [8] Harris Decima, (2006), " Consumer and Travel Trade Research in China - Qualitative Report ", Decima Research Center, Canada. [9] ITE, (2011), " China Outbound Market Report Nov,2011 ", International Travel Expo, Hong Kong. [10] Keating, B. W. and Kriz, A. (2008), " Outbound Tourism From China: Literature Review and Research Agenda ", Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 15(1), 2008, [11] Latham, K., (2011), " Blue Paper: How the rise of Chinese tourism will change the face of the European travel industry ", University of London. [12] Mansfeld, Y. (1992), "From Motivation to Actual Travel. Annals of Tourism Research", 19: [13] MOT, (2010), " Inbound Tourism - Tourists and Tourist Nights Report ", Publications of Egyptian Ministry of Tourism. [14] Pearce, P., A. M. Morrison., and J. L. Rutledge (1998), " Tourism: Bridges Across Continents ", Sydney: McGraw-Hill. [15] Uysal, M. and Hagan, L. (1993), " Motivations of pleasure travel and tourism", In M. Khan, M. Olsen, & T. Var (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Hospitality and Tourism (pp ), New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. [16] UNWTO, (2011), " Tourism Barometer 2011". [17] UNWTO, (2011), " UNWTO Tourism Highlights 2011 Edition ". [18] Wang, J. and Wei, L. 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5 Identifying Service Failures Among Resort Customers in Langkawi Island Noor Azimin Zainol Abstract The aim of this study is to identify service failures that resort hotel customers in Langkawi generally encounter. Critical Incident Technique (CIT) was employed and only negative incidents were collected in this study. Purposive sampling were applied to get the sample of respondents who were resort customers `visiting Langkawi Island. Content analysis was performed on the data collected which has resulted in a classificatory schema of four categories and twelve sub-categories of negative incidents reported. The results revealed that the two largest categories of service failures that resort customers normally encounter were related to service delivery system failure and natural environment with the most reported problematic incident were regarding product problems and animal issues. Most of the reported incidents were attributed to the resort while problems related to animals were generally externally attributed. Keywords service failures, resort customers, critical incident technique I. INTRODUCTION HE service sector including hospitality industry is already Tthe largest sector in virtually all economies throughout the world. The competition in the hospitality industry is getting intense as more and more service providers enter the industry. Increased competition between hospitality providers is reflected in the ways that customers nowadays critically assess the quality of service offerings. Thus, the importance of managing and maintaining service quality has never been greater. Striving for zero defects and total quality management places issues of quality at the centre of hospitality management s attention. Tourism and hospitality industry is expected to continue to be a major source of key driver to the development of the service sector in Malaysia. Positioning itself as one of the top tourist resort destination islands in the world, issues of service quality in Langkawi Island have been driven by increasing levels of competition locally and internationally, in addition to the commitment of delivering excellent service at all times. Service failure has always been associated with a service delivery which does not meet or falls below one s expectations [1]-[3]. Noor Zainol is with the School of Tourism, Hospitality and Environmental Management, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Kedah Malaysia phone: ; fax: ; azimin@uum.edu.my Apparently this will have an effect on a customer s evaluation of service performance, as their expectations are not being met. Identification of possible failures from the customer s perspective would be an excellent way to prevent breakdowns from taking place in the first instance. Although some literature have evaluated the possible failure factors [4], it is evident that more empirical evidence is needed to determine other possible factors. Therefore the aim of this study is to identify the service failures that resort hotel customers in Langkawi generally encounter. By this, the service providers could be aware of possible failures and amend policies to identify all areas that can be improved and make the customer s experience better in the future. II. LITERATURE REVIEW Quality issues have always been an important and critical issue throughout the years. [5] had described quality as management s responsibility to ensure for continuous improvement of products and services to meet customer needs and to stay ahead of competition. Quality begins with the design of the service delivery system and thus being assessed by the customers during the service delivery process. The presence of customers during service delivery, the criticality of capacity utilization, the complexity of operations and the reliance on service contact staff in managing the moment of trut are all key characteristics of quality in hospitality operations. However, managing quality has continually been a challenging task as it involves a complex blend of operations and service elements. Quality in service delivery is not easy to maintain as each of the elements described above are almost always prone to things not going the way they should be. The presence of customers in high contact services such as the hospitality industry makes the moment of truth critical. Understanding service quality is fundamental as it is the basis of customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is a result of customer assessment of a service based on a comparison of their perceptions of service delivery with their prior expectations [6]. The characteristics of hospitality operations the central importance of the customer, the complexity of operation and the reliance on service contact staff, all make it even prone for failures to occur. The growing recognition of service quality has increasingly identified failure acknowledgment and failure management as a critical task for service operations managers. The area of service failure is worthy of further study as scholars need to investigate the harm it can have on the service provider [7], [8]. Despite the 108