SINGAPORE (Feb 20): Singapore emerged as the third largest market in Southeast Asia for Chinese tourists spending over the Chinese New Year, with an increase of 34% in average spending per Chinese tourist, according to a joint report released by Nielsen and Alipay.
The research dived into the overseas spending and mobile payment behaviour of Chinese consumers across 54 markets where Alipay is accepted for the period from Feb 4 to 10, the first week Chinese New Year.
The report, titled 2018 Trends for Mobile Payment in Chinese Outbound Tourism, showed that 60% of merchants that had adopted Alipay reported growth in revenue and foot traffic, while offline in-store transaction value jumped 2.2 times y-o-y.
Even the older generations are keeping up with times and embracing digital payments, as Alipay becomes mainstream.
In 2018, 69% of outbound Chinese tourists used mobile payments while abroad, up 4 percentage points (pp) from 2017. And 88% of older Chinese tourists tend to ask merchants if they accept mobile payment, 14pp higher than the year before,
Some of the other findings include the doubling of transaction volume in Singapore, with transaction volumes in Sentosa trebling.
When shopping, Chinese tourists were found to consider three key factors: discounts, quality and price. But compared to a year ago, product quality has become more important, meaning that the demand for high quality products is increasing for Chinese tourists when they travel.
The importance of accepted payment methods has dropped, as more overseas merchants have improved the availability of payment solution familiar to Chinese travellers.
