Il turismo cinese in Italia, Tesi di Laurea di Erasmino Avilés Zùniga
Tesi di laurea sul turismo cinese di Erasmino Avilés Zùniga (MBA UET)
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: The author of the present thesis tried to fill various gaps within the extensive literature available on Chinese inbound tourism, with a more detailed outlook on the Italian case, without neglecting it on the level of Europe as a whole. Among them demographics and psychographics for Chinese tourists in Italy, in order to better profile this customer segment and finding out possible relationships between their variables, as well as shedding light on many controversial statements put forward by a number of different publishers. Some additional analyses were performed as well. Topics explored included gender, location, native language, age, marital status, educational level, employment status, company nationality, amount of paid vacation days, persona according to meaning of traveling, persona according to life values, travel companions, tour arrangement, future possible tour arrangement, booking method, visit reason, days the trip was arranged in advance, number of past trips in Italy, whether the tourist previously studied in Europe, length of stay in Italy, length of stay abroad, other countries visited, extra expenses, relationship between, hotel rating and hotel perceived rating, preferred appliance for watching Chinese tv abroad, satisfaction towards staff humbleness, tetraphobia, unexpected souvenir bought, likelihood of purchasing souvenir for relatives which are coming to Italy, disliked Italian cuisine trait, frequency of fast food in China, frequency of consumption of Italian food in China, Italian restaurant problems, strangeness of Chinese dishes in Italy, pleasure or need as main reason for consuming Italian food, preferred time for consuming Italian food, likelihood to visit a country with low destination awareness but free-visa status, possible other chosen countries for visiting before Italy, favorite mode of transportation, souvenirs purchased the most, unexpected souvenir purchased, favorite payment method, most problematic barrier to entry for tourists, favorite kind of Chinese cuisine, in addition to all the complex relationships between these subjects, which include whether age affects a chinese tourist having a problem with italian restaurants, age difference among genders, whether fast food consumption and whether a chines tourist dislikes italian ingredients, dishes or nothing don’t affect each other, whether there is a relationship between the personas a chinese tourist is according to meaning of traveling or life values, whether the frequency of consumption of italian food in china and reason for italian food consumption are related, whether personas a chinese tourists has according to meaning of traveling or life values and days this tourists arranged the trip in advance are related, and a few more.
METHODOLOGY: First an extensive literature review was given in this paper, and with this information, a self-administered questionnaire was first handed out to tourists in a pilot study in Milano during 2017 and larter handed out to tourists at the Aeroporto di Milano-Malpensa and in the Piazza del Duomo, Milano, during a long time frame encompassing two different samples, the first in December 2017 and the second one in October-November 2018, despite many limitations given by tourists themselves and governmental limitations. Totally speaking, 406 Mainland Chinese tourist respondents filled out the 47-question questionnaire, and a good number of more tourists did not want to take part into the survey. Answers were processed through SPSS analysis, by means of Descriptive statistics, Independent-samples T-test, Chi-squared test, Analysis of variance, Multiple response sets, Correlations, and Crosstabulations. Missing data for some analyses were dealth with multiple imputation. Answers Tables and graphs are given for most of them
FINDINGS & CONCLUSIONS: Some findings challenged the previous ideas, while others upholded them. Cantonese and Sichuanese cuisine prove again to be the most the most popular ones and are to be emulated by catering business, and suggestions are given. Also, paid vacation days are not significantly different among companies of different countries, but more resarch is needed. Unconscious superstition about numerology and tetraphoby is present in decisions and better treated with cautiosness. A preference for eating Italian cuisine at different times of the day is found, and possible reasons for it given. Lesser-known destinations but potentially competitive due to visa exemption like Serbia are not a common choice, but perhaps this will change due to a numerical increase of such destinations. Staff is advised to act subserviently even though tourists seem satisfied.
Minor findings include the fact that many statistical relationships among the variables were found to be non-statistically significant, but a larger sample is likely needed so as to offset the small sample size.
The results are mainly applicable to business and VFR tourists.
As far as the author’s knowledge goes, this is the first comprehensive research done in the world on such a variety of topics about Chinese tourists.