More than 5 million cross-border trips were made over the three days of China’s Mid Autumn Festival. Jacques Roizen, from Digital Luxury Group, talks us through its success.
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00:00Mid-autumn festival in the Chinese calendar of milestone is an important tradition but
00:07it's not a gifting holiday.
00:09So it's first and foremost favoring experience and tourism.
00:16What we've seen in the last three to four years is a progressive shift by Chinese consumers
00:25of their disposable income towards more experience at the expense of luxury goods.
00:32And so a holiday like the mid-autumn festival is a great opportunity for consumers to experience
00:43food and beverage, tourism, hospitality, and that's what we're seeing in the form of a
00:51surge this year.
00:54Of course, there's a surge in international travel now that the borders have reopened
01:00and that international travel is resuming.
01:03That's not surprising.
01:04What's surprising is that we're continuing to see a growth in domestic tourism during
01:12this year's mid-autumn festival, which means that there's a really growing continued growth
01:17in the appetite of the Chinese consumer around experience, travel, tourism, not just abroad
01:25but also inside China.
01:27Is this just a correction post-pandemic or is there something new that's driving this
01:33growth in the last few years?
01:36I think this is a redistribution of their disposable income in the context of a new
01:43appreciation of what life has to offer, if you will.
01:49And there's a lot of enthusiasm behind experience and taking advantage of the fact that we are
02:00in a post-pandemic world.
02:02At the same time, let's be very clear.
02:05The appetite for luxury goods from Chinese consumers remains extremely high.
02:13Chinese consumers love luxury brands and love luxury goods and the desirability is not lower
02:22than it was in the past.
02:24What you're witnessing is a recalibration, first, of how they are allocating their disposable
02:31income and then the second thing is that as a result of the fact that luxury consumers
02:38are able to travel outside China, you're starting to see them spend money outside China as well.
02:45But at the end of the day, the Chinese consumer, regardless of where she or he spends their
02:52money, is a Chinese consumer and therefore needs to be talked to in China.
03:00And so what you're seeing is luxury brands, at least the leading ones, understanding full
03:05well that the spend by Chinese consumers may take place in different geographies and not
03:12entirely inside China.
03:16China is where you need to invest in order to generate brand awareness and desirability
03:21and you're seeing all the luxury brands, or at least the leading ones, invest significant
03:26amounts inside China in order to generate this kind of desirability, which is so critical
03:32to their revenue, not just in China but around the world.