China’s Travel Infrastructure Boom and 8 Other Tourism Trends This Week

China’s Travel Infrastructure Boom Sets a New Global Agenda: To capture more of the continuing engine of growth that is China’s outbound market, get on the train, set up your free Wi-Fi hotspot, and warm up your WeChat account.

Royal Caribbean Is Getting Chinese Cruisers Out of China: Royal Caribbean has spent more than a decade in China building a reputation and customer base. Now that work appears to be paying off in a global way.

Progress Finally Being Made on a Single African Passport: Will 2019 be the year that the African Union passport is made freely available to the continent’s 1.2 billion citizens? Probably not, but technocrats at the 55-nation union say progress is being made.

International Travel Slowdown Hits U.S. Trump’s policies and a strong dollar have led to stagnant international tourism growth in the U.S. Expect the slowdown to continue in 2019.

UK Tourism Has a Europe Problem: Decline in Visitors From the Continent. The UK might have seen a fall in tourists in 2018, but that has a lot to do with the extraordinary growth the year before. The longer-term trend is for steady growth as long as Brexit doesn’t get in the way.

Travel Megatrends 2019: Travel Upselling Gets Smarter Than Ever. Travel companies have long tried to woo their current customers into buying more, but their promotional tactics have tended to be generic and blunt. Not anymore. Brands are now adopting sophisticated technology to make their sales pitches relevant and effective.

Travel Association Forms Myanmar Chapter But Will the Government Benefit? ASTA’s new Myanmar chapter and planned partnership with Myanmar tourism will give travel advisors new opportunities to learn about an emerging destination. However, it also raises ethical concerns about supporting a country that engages in ethnic cleansing.

ASTA Is Giving the Entire Travel Industry Advice on an Important Rebrand: The letter ASTA sent was over-ambitious and a little dramatic, but ultimately a smart move and way overdue.

Virtuoso Looks to Help Agencies Get Beyond the Daily Grind: Virtuoso is a you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours kind of business. The luxury travel network has some good programs to help member agencies, and that increases engagement with Virtuoso. It also provides learnings on how to keep refining the company.