Even still, the analogy is not perfect: “Japan is a smaller country with a more homogenous culture and economy. When they rose, they all rose together,” says Graff. “But what is happening in China is more a tiered segmentation than a shift. Younger, more experienced travelers, from higher income brackets, are going abroad and traveling independently but at the same time we are seeing a new wave of travelers from second and third tier cities going on group tours, mostly within China.”

China’s developing tourism market is perhaps most similar to another nation: the United States. “It’s also a big market with a very big domestic market. Only a small percentage of the population had passports before 9/11,” says Graff. In the U.S., cruise ship and bus tours promising ‘Europe in 18 days’ in the 1950s and ’60s were soon followed by the advent of the hippie trail and luxury individual travelers trying to recreate the Grand Tour. Today all three strands sit comfortably alongside each other. China, it seems, is headed in the same direction.

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