中国人来了

The Chinese are coming, the Chinese are coming. At least that's what the world's travel operators, hotel companies and airlines are all assuming, and are in fact counting on to drive demand.

International tourist arrivals, a measure of actual bodies on the move, have jumped 30 per cent since 2003, to nearly 900m in 2007, according to the UN's World Tourism Organisation. Now the internet, low-cost airlines and rising Asian wealth are predicted to send the numbers really skyward. The UNWTO forecasts annual tourist arrivals will reach 1.6bn tourists by 2020, including 166m travellers from the Asia-Pacific region alone. These numbers are reasonably conservative: the forecast of 100m Chinese tourists, for example, suggests that just 7 per cent of the country's population will be travelling abroad, up from 3 per cent now. What if the actual percentage was 10?

The infrastructure is already being put in place. International hotel chains are salivating, announcing plans to open 854 hotels in the next four years in Europe alone. That would be an increase of 146,000 rooms, or 10 per cent, above what's already there, according to data firm Lodging Econometrics. Dubai should grow even faster: the 56,000 planned new hotel rooms by 2012 dwarf the 26,000 already open. Boeing, for its part, booked a record 1,427 commercial plane orders in 2007 and Airbus is counting on Asian-Pacific growth to fuel orders for its new super jumbo A380.

The real shortage is of things to see. The Sistine Chapel can squeeze in only a few hundred people at a time. In Paris, the Louvre accommodated 8m gawkers last year, up from 5.7m in 2003. But there is a limit. Even if the new Chinese tourists filed past the Mona Lisa at a rate of 100 per minute, on the museum's current opening schedule, it would take three years to funnel all of them through.

中国人来了，中国人来了──至少这是全球旅行社、酒店管理公司和航空公司所设想的情况。实际上，它们正在依赖中国人来推动旅游需求。

联合国世界旅游组织(UNWTO)的数据显示，作为衡量实际流动游客数量的指标，国际旅客接收人数自2003年以来跃升了30%，到2007年增长至近9亿人。如今，预计互联网、低成本航空公司和亚洲人不断增加的财富将推动这一数字大幅上升。联合国世界旅游组织预计，到2020年，全球每年游客数量将达到16亿人次，其中仅亚太地区的游客数量就将达到1.66亿人次。这些数字相当保守：例如，中国游客数量将达1亿人次的预测意味着，中国仅有7%的人口将出国旅游，略高于目前的3%。如果实际比例为10%又会怎样？

旅游基础设施已经到位。国际连锁酒店正垂涎三尺，宣布计划明年仅在欧洲就将开设854家酒店。酒店行业咨询公司Lodging Econometrics的数据显示，这将增加14.6万间客房，比现在的客房数量高出10%。迪拜的增长速度甚至会更快：到2012年计划新增5.6万间酒店客房，超过了现在已经营业的2.6万间。波音(Boeing)2007年商用飞机订单数量达到了创纪录的1427架，而空中客车(Airbus)则依赖亚太地区的增长来刺激其新型A380超大型客机的订单。

真正缺少的是观光内容。西斯廷教堂一次只能接纳数百名游客。在巴黎，卢浮宫去年接待了800万名游客，较2003年的570万有所增长。但这方面存在限制。即便新增中国游客以每分钟100人的速度排队从《蒙娜丽莎》前经过，那么按照该博物馆目前的开放日程表，他们也需要3年才能完全通过。