Campervan craze: Chinese tourists hit the road to explore Australia

BORED with hop-on, hop-off guided tours, a rising number of Chinese tourists are travelling around Australia in campervans — without even speaking a word of English.

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RONG Li and three Chinese travel companions can scarcely muster a few words of English between them, but they’ve embarked on a very ­Aussie holiday.

The tourists may struggle to read road signs but they’ve spent the past nine days sightseeing from behind the wheel of a campervan.

Using a navigation app on their phone to read out directions in Mandarin, they are typical of a new wave of Chinese tourists bored with being ushered single-file past landmarks on hop-on, hop-off guided tours.

Chinese woman Rong Li, 46, is travelling Australia with three friends, Yuping Song, Yi Nie and Maujun Qi. Picture: Nicole Garmston

Growth in Chinese visitors choosing to caravan or camp grew by an average of 22 per cent a year between 2013 and 2016, according to Tourism Research Australia.

Industry bodies and academics largely chalk up the growth to influential bloggers waxing lyrical about hitting the open road.

Campervan hire companies Britz and Maui provide videos explaining local road rules to Chinese drivers and Big 4 caravan camp managers have mocked up maps of NSW towns with Chinese symbols.

Holiday parks have translated their maps into Chinese to accommodate the increasing Chinese market.

Speaking through a translator, Ms Li said all four travellers drove to Sydney, Gold Coast, Canberra and Melbourne solely relying on the ­English she picked up at a two-month language course in her home city, Guiyang.

“The only challenge is to talk to the holiday park owners to book sites with power,” Ms Li said.

Chinese visitors at Big 4 Holiday Parks typically check in after the ­office is shut, which has led the company to assume they underestimate the distance between stops.

The new wave of Chinese tourists are bored of following tours so they have opted to rent caravans. Picture: Nicole Garmston

Big 4 chief executive officer Steven Wright said it is challenging to explain to Chinese that you can’t drive from Sydney to Cairns in a day, but that wasn’t the only language or cultural barrier.

“A lot of Chinese haven’t ever swum in a swimming pool or cooked on a barbecue, so most of our parks have Chinese signage now,” Mr Wright said.

“Three years ago it was all about packaged tours for the Chinese; now they’re getting on the road for blue skies and fresh air.”