China To Bring In Blacklist For Its Gambling Holidaymakers

The Chinese government are making plans to restrict its holidaying citizens by compiling a blacklist of restricted gambling tourism destinations.

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism announced on Wednesday that it is well underway to announce the first destinations to be on the list, however no locations have been mentioned yet.

The government is concerned that over recent years typical destinations for Chinese to travel to have seen casinos open there just to attract Chinese tourists.

However this has not gone un-noticed by Chinese officials and the Ministry for Culture and Tourism said in a statement: “These practices are disrupting the order of China’s outbound tourism market and endangering the personal safety and property of Chinese citizens.”

This threat or indeed if it does go ahead is a major weapon to use against any region looking for Chinese tourists, according to the most recent figures in 2019 by the World Tourism Organization a total of 155 million Chinese tourists went overseas, that is a rise of 3.3% on the previous year. In 2018 Chinese tourists spent a total of $277 billion while holidaying abroad. That amount makes up a staggering 20% of all global international travel and expenditure, no wonder no destination wants to be on the blacklist.

One location being rumoured for the blacklist is the Philippines, having opened up casinos over recent times and more annoyingly for Chinese authorities it is estimated that Chinese gamblers spend an estimated $145 billion a year on illegal online gambling sites coming out of the Philippines, this is creating some major problems for Chinese authorities.