Chinese expansion:
the next disruption? — March 2018

Peter Bellew — erstwhile CEO for a short time of Malaysia Airlines, and now back at Ryanair — commented at the AAPA annual meeting eighteen months ago that the development on tourism outbound from China reminded him of the excitement of the explosion in European tourism to the Mediterranean in the 1970s: lack of infrastructure meant building and operating hotels; poor local controls led to hastily constructed facilities and the delights of such as the Costa del Sol; but the growth led to huge opportunities.

The following chart and table are the results of detailed analysis that arose from a recent project we at Aviation Strategy produced looking at the markets in Asia. Various other commentators have noted the way that the Chinese carriers have increased the number of destinations they serve outside the country as outbound tourism has been developing. In this analysis we have looked at the growth in the number of seats.