In Japan, Chinese tourists are a welcome boost — if a loud, messy one

Chinese tourists come to Japan for the sushi and for the shopping. But increasingly, they’re also coming for one thing that money can’t buy: fresh air.

A tour guide holds a flag while leading a group of Chinese tourists wearing rental kimonos at the Kiyomizu-dera temple in Kyoto. Chinese visitors are flocking to Japan in search of fresh air and safe food, buoying the local economy. (Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg)

“The blue sky and the clean air are great. They’re something we don't have at home,” said Xu Jun, an agent for a steel trading company from Guangzhou, a huge manufacturing city in southern China that is blighted by pollution. Xu was visiting the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido this month.

Chinese tourism: The West strains to understand a new, $85 billion-a-year industry

The first thing to know about Chinese tourists visiting the West is that you will probably never truly meet their high expectations. The second thing to know is that, for Western tourism officials and businesses, you have to try anyway, because Chinese tourists are the second-highest overall spenders in the world.

Chinese tourists pose in front of Buckingham Palace in London. (Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images)

In 2011, ExxonMobil, the largest company in the world by revenue, made about $41 billionin profits. Last year, Chinese tourists spent more than twice as much on foreign trips: $85 billion. That’s a skyrocketing increase from $72.6 billion in 2011 and $54.9 billion the year before. International comparative data isn’t available for last year, but in previous years Chinese had ranked third among highest-spending tourists, behind Germany and the U.S.; it appears likely that China’s tourists have overtaken American tourism and may soon pass Germans as well.