(ECNS) -- A report by popular online travel service ctrip.com said spending for overseas trips by Chinese tourists increases when restrictions on housing purchases are implemented at home.
The report said that by Oct. 13, tourism bookings for departures at the end of October and November rose by 40 percent from a year earlier. Orders from the 21 cities with home-purchase restrictions increased 60 percent.
Similar correlations were found in 2011 when China imposed a slew of measures to cool the hot real estate market.
Travel expert Wei Changren said the housing and stock markets are the two main investment channels for Chinese, but no authoritative data could prove the clear relationship between outbound tourism and the housing market.
With China the biggest outbound tourism country in the world for four consecutive years beginning in 2012, Chinese tourists spent more than $100 billion in 2015, according to the latest data.
The China National Tourism Administration said in a report that outbound tourism by Chinese citizens continued to register rapid growth, with the number of tour destinations also increasing.
In 2015, about 117 million Chinese citizens traveled overseas, up 9 percent over the previous year, with spending increasing 16.6 percent to $104.5 billion.
Experts believe that the popularity of outbound tourism among Chinese is due to multiple factors: increasing income, maturing tastes in travel and visa policy changes. They said they expect the future outbound tourism market to show a continuing trend toward diversification in destinations.
