China's 'selfie' generation to drive next tourism wave

China's 'selfie' generation to drive next tourism wave

Chinese tourism experts say independent millennials will drive China's outbound tourism boom in years to come and operators need to get ready.

The post-80s generation of Chinese, brought up in one child families under former Chinese leader Deng Xiao Ping's open door policy, are driving the flow, according to Cheng Mingming, Lecturer in Tourism at the University of Otago.

These well-educated, well-off urbanites are China's first generation to be able to travel freely and they behave quite differently from the typical package tourist of the past, he says.