Chinese Tourists as Priority Customers of the Ukrainian Tour Product

The article analyzes the outbound tourism market of China as a priority target audience of consumers of the Ukrainian tourist product. The diplomatic prerequisites for the development of tourist relations with the People's Republic of China and the partner countries of the economic and humanitarian project «One Belt, One Road» have been named. The state and rates of growth of mutual tourist flows between Ukraine and China have been analyzed. The competitive advantages of the Chinese tourist market have been compared with Ukrainian. The main objective of this article is to study the Chinese tourist market in the context of the target audience of consumers of the Ukrainian tour product, as well as to determine the recommendations for stimulating the tourist flow between China and Ukraine. The scientific novelty is that the main characteristics of the outgoing Chinese tourist market have been determined and researched, such as: hyper volume; significant purchasing power; cluster (combined) trips; short-term trips; preference to the national Chinese cuisine; organization and group nature; peculiarities of travel behavior; predominance of women tourists; predominance of certain types of tourism; priority of Asian destinations, but at the same time the emergence of interest in the EU and Russia; prioritization of on-line booking of tours; seasonality; steady growth rates etc. These peculiarities of the Chinese outbound tourism market should be taken into consideration when developing tourist products for the Chinese and creating a strategy to increase tourist flows from China for any tourist destination. The practical significance of the obtained results is that the formulated recommendations might be used by subjects of tourist industry who plan to work with the Chinese consumers of the Ukrainian tourist product. Also the positive effect and proposals for visa liberalization for the Chinese tourists entering Ukraine have been provided, namely: to develop a simplified mechanism for obtaining visas for organized groups of Chinese tourists; to abolish the necessity of Ukrainian visas for the Chinese citizens who have the Schengen visas; to implement a transit 144-hour visa-free regime; to provide a translation of on-line visa application forms from Ukrainian to Chinese.