Daria Soldatenko

Federation Business School

A cross-cultural comparison of motivations of Chinese and New Zealand tourists

Tourism is important to Australia’s economy, injecting A$53 billion to the economy (3.2% of its GDP) in 2015-16 (Tourism Research Australia, 2017). Further, 580,200 people in Australia are employed in tourism, comprising 4.9% of the nation’s workforce.

In particular, international visitors are important to Australia’s economy, and in 2016 there were 7.6 million international visitors who collectively spent $39.1 billion. New Zealand and China are two main generating markets for Australia. Arrivals from these countries represented 34% of total inbound arrivals in 2016. New Zealand remains the largest source of short-term arrivals to Australia with 1,347,400 arrivals over the past year. China continues to be a stand-out contributor, with over one million Chinese visitors in the same period. This forms Australia’s second largest inbound market for visitor arrivals and the largest market for total spend and visitor nights. One quarter of all international tourism receipts stem from Chinese visitors.

As China and New Zealand are of special interest to Australian destination marketers, understanding their unique motivations (ie push/pull factors) for travel is essential. This study reports on the key issues of these markets and presents a unique conceptual model for examining this phenomenon.

Daria Soldatenko is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Stipend and RTP Fee-Offset Scholarship through Federation University Australia.