CRI听力:Chinese Rush Overseas for Spring Festival

Sydney's harbor, beaches and outdoor lifestyle have long attracted tourists from across the globe.

But now the demographic of visitors heading Down Under is changing fast.

Government figures show China is now Australia's second biggest market.

Felicia Mariani, managing director of Australian Tourism Export Council, attributes the inflow of Chinese tourists to the global financial crisis.

"What happened was through the GFC (global financial crisis) all of a sudden the markets in the East became even more prominent. Because those economies were not as adversely affected by the GFC, they rebounded quite quickly. The emerging middle class started to happen a lot faster and all of a sudden it was like we woke up one day and everyone needed to quickly turn to the left because all of the (tourism) business was now coming from the East."

Chinese tourists to Australia increased by 17 percent in the past year, surpassing the total number of visitors from Britain for the first time, though New Zealand remains Australia's biggest source of visitors.

The Accor Hotel Group runs regular Chinese culture, language and history courses for its staff across Australia.

Accor Business Development Manager Kate Marshall says the hotels have introduced several initiatives to improve their welcome for Chinese visitors.

"We needed to be able to provide services, special foods and collateral that they (Chinese visitors) could understand. We also knew that our staff was having difficulty sometimes understanding what their needs were, and so this course also helps them to understand the history and the background of the Chinese guests."

Tourism authorities in Australia are estimating at least a million Chinese tourists will visit Australia per year by 2020.

In China, there has been a 30 percent increase in bookings for overseas travel during the Spring Festival this year compared to two years ago, with Thailand being the most attractive country.

Thailand's tourism authorities estimate 200-thousand Chinese tourists will visit Thailand for the Lunar New Year.

Analysts are attributing the phenomenon on the income increase, flexible visa policies and a strong Chinese currency.

The increasing enthusiasm for overseas trips during the Spring Festival is part of a surging market for China's outbound tourism.

Official numbers suggest over 80 million Chinese citizens went on outbound tours in 2012.

That was almost 17 percent more than the year earlier.

Those Chinese tourists took the equivalent of almost 100 billion US dollars to their destinations.

For CRI, I'm Su Yi.