Chinese Leisure Activities I Daxue Consulting

12Jan2016

Chinese Leisure Activities: Three New Market trends

Chinese’s changing habits for leisure activities

Several years ago, television was the first leisure activities after work or in the weekend in China. With the rising disposable income and changing idea on the lifestyle, people have more choices nowadays. Among all the entertainments, travelling is the most popular method for Chinese to extricate themselves from work and study. Internet and movies following after travelling occupy great part of Chinese’s leisure time. As a result, the car rental industry, the mobile phones market and the movie box office respectively witnessed huge increase this in 2015.

China’s self-driving travelling develops car rental market

Travelling ranks NO.1 on the billboard of “Ten Chinese most popular leisure activities” as 48.5% people spend their leisure time on travelling. The self-driving travelling is the second most commonly used method to travel, which brings a rising boom on the car rental industry. Self-driving travelling is convenient and free because travellers can choose their favorite destination and stay at a place as long as they want, something that cannot be reached with a package tour. As a result, for destinations near travellers’ residential city, more and more people tend to drive their own car for their transport. However, travellers prefer to take a public transport like railway or flight to get to the long distance destinations and then rent a car in the local area so that they won’t spend much time and energy on the road before beginning the travel. People only need to perform a simple registration process and pay a deposit to get a car as soon as they descend the planes or trains as most car rental companies locate their shops near to important transport hub, which facilitates travellers to a great extent. Every car rent has a traveled guide and a GPS which help travellers quickly to know about the city. When hirer’s meet with some problems unfortunately during their trip, they can get a quick service from the nearest shops as car rental companies have shops in different areas of the city. The convenient returning procedure is also a reason for the popularity of car renting. Furthermore, the safety guaranteed by companies provides travellers with confidence when they enjoy their fun time during the journey. No doubt that more and more self-driving travellers choose to rent a local car instead of driving their own car when travelling in a foreign city.

Rising time on the Internet boosts the mobile phones market in China

The statistic shows that the internet is the second common leisure activity for Chinese people. Moreover, netizens are now shifting their tools from PC to mobiles or tablets as they are more accessible, which leads to the increasing sales of mobile phones. Just pick out the smartphones from their pockets, people can get access to the internet within the 30s. Thus, portable phones become the best choice for netizens who want to be connected on the internet at any time. Every day, people spend more than 3 hours on their phones to contact friends with Wechat (In Chinese 微信), to watch series with Youku or to buy goods with TAOBAO and so on. There are 0.555 billion people using mobile phones to watch the news and 0.267 billion people playing online games through the mobiles. It’s not surprising that you can see many people staring at their mobile phones in the subway or other public transportations in China. Mobile phones are not only the communication tools but also the entertainment tools for people nowadays. Therefore, mobile has been an indispensable element in Chinese daily life. Distributors in China are rising significantly, high frequent usage of mobiles and rapid technical renovation make 52% Chinese change their mobiles every two years, which expands the mobile phones market at a rocketing pace.

Chinese audience attributes to the prosperity of movie box office

39.2% Chinese like to go to cinemas when they have spare time. A lot of Chinese have the habits to watch movies and movie lovers spread out of whole China, who attributes to the prosperity of movie box office. In 2015, China’s box office reaches 7 billion dollars with the growth rate of 40%. The growing rate of imported movies is 52.30% while that of domestic movies is 43.74%, which shows that imported movies perform well in China. With the development of China, people prefer to enrich their spiritual life after material life has been satisfied. Watching movies is an easily accessible media full of cultural messages for citizens. The audience can also get the thoughts that directors want to convey. Movies can also be the talking materials for friends to communicate with each other, which gathers the people with same interest together. Thus, more and more cinemas are open throughout the cities so that people can watch movies easily after work or in the weekend. Meanwhile, various kinds of movies are produced every year in order to cater for different people. Almost every international blockbuster from foreign countries like America and France are imported and some of them are added with Chinese element to open the Chinese market. Nowadays, couples, families with children and even elders have become the targets of movie market. Accordingly, movies market has a glorious prospect due to Chinese’s new habit for their leisure activities.

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