Parents snap up summer study trips
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E-mail China Daily, May 7, 2019
Chinese bookings for domestic and overseas educational tours during the seasonal school vacation are on the rise, Yang Feiyue reports.
With two months to go before the summer vacation, parents have already gone out of their way to plan ahead for their children.
Since April, many have beaten a path to several brick-and-mortar shops in Beijing that are owned by the major domestic online travel agency, Ctrip, the company reports.
"The online views of our summer-vacation study tour products have increased by 120 percent in April as compared with the previous month," says Zhang Jie, general manager of Ctrip's study-tour operations.
Zhang expects the number of young travelers who take educational trips to grow by more than 50 percent compared with the same period of last year.
At the moment, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan and Canada are among the most popular foreign destinations for those inquiring about study tours, while Beijing, Gansu province's Dunhuang, Shanghai, Shaanxi province's Xi'an and Jiangsu province's Nanjing topped the domestic-destination list.
Chinese parents have continued to increase input in their children's educations, Zhang says.
Their kids' footprints have been left on hundreds of destinations in over 20 countries.
"Products that just scratch the surface, like simple tours of famous universities, have fallen out of favor with the market," Zhang says.
Language training, NASA's space camp, computer programming, homestays, wild animal care and desert and museum experiences are among the most popular options.
"Certain volunteering and public-welfare routes have seen a particularly fast increase in bookings," Zhang says.
During the recent winter vacation in February, study-trip bookings surged by 80 percent compared with the same period of last year.
Domestic trips cost roughly 4,500 yuan ($663) per capita on average, while expenditures hit 21,000 yuan for outbound experiences, the agency reports.
Parents from Shanghai, Beijing and Guangdong province's Guangzhou and Shenzhen are the most willing to spend, according to Ctrip's data.
Wang Chunyan has arranged to take her son on study tours since 2015.
"We've been to deserts, grasslands and (sections of) the Silk Road over the years," Wang says.
Wang has booked for her son－who is currently in the fifth grade－a two-week trip to Australia and a two-week trip to the US in August.
"He will be sitting in local classes and studying with local children there," Wang says.
Although the outbound-study trips will cost her around 70,000 yuan, she believes it's money well spent.
"He will learn things while having fun in a foreign country, which will open his eyes to the world and enable him to make new friends," she says.
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