Sienna Parulis-Cook, Director of Marketing and Communications at Dragon Trail International, says Macau has capitalised on its pandemic-era popularity, which drew significant attention on social media.
Macau Business magazine l October | Special Report | The new tourist (that loves Macau)
Dragon Trail International, a marketing solutions company specialising in the Chinese outbound travel market, publishes the influential Chinese Traveler Sentiment Report, a key resource for understanding Chinese tourists’ preferences and behaviours.
Is the Chinese tourist profile changing, or has it already changed? In other words, is it an ongoing process that may undergo mutations, or are there changes we can already consider structural?
Sienna Parulis-Cook – The Chinese outbound tourism market is always evolving and developing, and influenced by many factors, including market maturity, visa policies, traveller preferences, global economics, marketing, social media and other digital platforms, and generational/demographic changes.
What are the main changes you highlight?
S.P.-C. – Mainly these: Fragmentation/diversification: The market is very diverse, and for quite some time now there hasn’t been “the Chinese traveller”. There are many distinct segments, based on age, travel experience, wealth, city of residence, and personal interests and preferences. Independence/personalisation: Perhaps the most significant long-term trend in the market is away from traditional, large, off-the-shelf group tours and towards independent travel and personalised/customised and private group travel. Experiences vs. shopping: Over the last ten years, the importance of shopping as a reason for outbound travel has declined significantly, while Chinese travellers are now more interested in having special experiences and exploring their personal interests. That said, shopping is still an important part of many consumers’ outbound travel experiences, and Chinese tourists are still known for spending more than the global average on shopping.
“Macau hosts a lot of live performances that are of interest to mainland Chinese, and the monthly performance calendar published by the Macao Government Tourism Authority on WeChat always receives a high number of views” – Sienna Parulis-Cook
To what extent did the pandemic create the change, or simply accelerate what was already brewing?
S.P.-C. – All of these trends and changes were already happening before the pandemic, and then accelerated by it. This is perhaps most true for the movement away from group tours to FIT and customised travel. On that note, an interesting statistic/data point I have that you might be interested in is that 217,000 mainland Chinese visited Macau as group visitors in January 2025, accounting for around 90.8 per cent of total inbound group tourists, and representing an 88.4 per cent increase. But in total, more than 2.75 million mainland Chinese visited Macau in January, so group travel actually represented less than 8 per cent of these visitors.
Macau appears in your Chinese Traveler Sentiment Report as the top destination outside the Mainland in 2025. Is this surprising? How do you explain it?
S.P.-C. – No, I don’t find this surprising. Greater China destinations including Macau, Hong Kong, and Taiwan have always accounted for around one half or even more of total outbound trips from the mainland. In 2024, Macau received more than 24.48 million mainland Chinese tourists, around 87.7 per cent of pre-pandemic figures, and rivalled only by Hong Kong with around 34 million arrivals from the mainland.During the pandemic, there was quite some time when Macau was the only outbound destination that mainland travellers could visit without needing to do weeks of quarantine on their return, so Macau was understandably popular during that time and got a lot of attention on social media channels like WeChat, where it is still strongly in the lead among all regional and municipal tourism boards for content views. It’s an easy, accessible destination – logistically, culturally, and linguistically.Macau hosts a lot of live performances that are of interest to mainland Chinese, and the monthly performance calendar published by the Macao Government Tourism Office on WeChat always receives a high number of views. This summer, Macau has also launched several collaborations with huge brands – Pop Mart and Sanrio – to host pop-up events and activities like a Hello Kitty bus and Labubu displays, and these have received a lot of attention as well.
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