Thanks to the cheap pound rate, the Chinese tourists are splashing out more than £29m in shopping centres across the high streets of the UK during the Golden Week holiday.
Worldpay, the expert in payments processor found in its new research that card transactions during the Golden Week holiday that lasted from 1 to 8 October has drawn £11m in London alone.
Golden Week is a twice-yearly Chinese holiday and is marked to celebrate the People’s Republic of China. It was initially expected that Chinese people will take trips around their country but now many choose to travel abroad.
British department stores reaped the greatest benefit of Golden Week tourism as their in-store sales increased by almost a third compared to the seasonal average.
Although the London spending was concentrated mainly in the boutiques and high-end stores, but pubs, restaurants and bars saw card spending from Chinese tourists surge by 23 per cent.
For September to November 2017, the flight bookings from China to the UK were increased by 10% than the previous year as ForwardKeys found out. International tourists have flocked to the UK since the EU referendum, as the fall in value of the pound against a host of other global currencies has given them a chance to snap up bargains on the British high street.
Worldpay’s UK chief marketing officer, James Frost commented that Britain is a world-class shopping destination and the Chinese tourists have also found interest in the same.
