Picture: An Indian group of school children visiting a palace.
Traveling in New Zealand is a small world tour and gives a good insight into the new dawn of Asian tourism. Having dinner in a Queenstown restaurant can be a truly international experience: the cook is Kiwi, the waiters are French, Belgian or Spanish and the guests German, Dutch, Israeli or Indian and Chinese. However, the biggest growth in New Zealand tourism nowadays hails from China and India. With increasing wealth after the war Europeans started to travel, so do Asians today. Tourists in Auckland, Queenstown and Taupo hail from a new and affluent middle-class. Take the Chinese for example. According to an article “A new grand tour” by The Economist they love to visit the Château Lafite Rothschild, Paris and Nice in France, Lucerne in Switzerland, Trier and Metzingen in Germany because of the Karl-Marx-Haus and the Hugo Boss outlet and Monaco for gambling. Shopping is also very high up on the list as luxury goods in Europe are cheaper and certainly not fake. Apparently Chinese tourist reserve a third of their budget for shopping. This also explains why New Zealand cities are planning to expand their shopping big time. Asian tourists in New Zealand prove that the next natural step after herded group tourism is individual tourism. So better get prepared, Museum Europe!
http://www.economist.com/node/17722582?story_id=17722582
Comments