花钱如流水，中国人把欧洲游变成跨国购物大狂欢

    拉罗卡德尔瓦列斯曾经只是加泰罗尼亚区一个慵懒的小村庄（居民7000人）.这里被农田环绕，距巴塞罗那35分钟路程。而如今，拉•罗卡购物中心的商场就坐落在这片农田上。这里特意模仿了加泰罗尼亚的小镇风格，开设了许多高档的名品打折商店。

    去年，拉•罗卡购物中心吸引了330万顾客，其中大部分是外国人，使它成了巴塞罗那访问量最大的旅游景点——甚至超过了加泰罗尼亚著名建筑师安东尼奥•高迪的史诗之作——蜚声全球的圣家族大教堂（SagradaFamilia cathedral）。

    一般来说，游客都会购买手工艺品、异域风情的食品或是傻乎乎的T恤。不过最近几年，随着金砖四国和其他发展中国家刮起旅游风，度假购物的方式也在发生改变。购买名牌商品已经成为许多旅游新军旅行活动的重点。他们将此视为感受发达国家用户至上主义的途径，还可以向家里的亲朋好友展示：他们确实出过国了。

    这种血拼热情在中国游客身上体现得最为明显。他们为自己现在可以在美国的巴士之旅上看风景、逛商场，或是沿着古老的教育旅行路线环游欧洲疯狂购物而欢欣鼓舞。预计到明年，中国游客购买的奢侈品的价值将超过世界上其他所有国家游客的总和。不过购物旅游远不是中国独有的现象，西班牙——尤其是巴塞罗那——给人们上了一堂示范课，让人们知道来自发展中国家的游客怎样改变了旅游业的面貌。

    根据联合国世界旅游组织（World Tourism Organization）的一份新报告，2012年，在旅游消费收入上，西班牙位居全球第二，欧洲以外的游客在这个国家消费了11亿美元。而在经济学人智库（Economist Intelligence Unit）和旅游购物退税公司环球蓝联（Global Blue）合作发布的欧洲城市消费指数排行中，马德里和巴塞罗那并列第二，仅次于伦敦。

    去年只有25万中国游客来到了西班牙，来自俄罗斯的游客却达到了160万，比2012年增加了31.6%。名品特卖商Value Retail是拉•罗卡购物中心的所有者，它还在欧洲其他地方拥有8座购物村。公司的西班牙运营部主任、出生于纽约的迈克尔•戈登伯格说：“因为这都是些非常全球化的品牌，也因为新兴市场正在崛起，有许多美妙的因素促成了我们的繁荣。为什么游客都到欧洲来度假呢？是为了看看文化和精致生活的发源地。他们想要像欧洲人一样生活。购买欧洲品牌，可以部分满足他们的这种愿望。”

    当年，信孚银行（Bankers Trust）向Value Retail的第一座购物中心——英国的比斯特购物村（Bicester Village）投资的时候，戈登伯格还在这家银行的房地产投资部门工作。1996年，他27岁的时候加入了这家公司。

    我们一边在购物中心的中央大街上漫步，一边听着瘦削的戈登伯格给我们讲解模仿加泰罗尼亚小镇风格的建筑细节。

    从政府风格的建筑环绕着的中央广场处，我们开始了参观之旅【一家罗意威（Loewe）的名品折扣店就坐落于市政大厅的一楼】。随后我们穿过了一个舒适的中产阶级社区，来到整洁的工厂区。街道以鹅卵石或铺路石铺就，屋顶盖满了瓦片，建筑的颜色近似于奶油色，而楼群之间的广场点缀着安东尼奥•高迪风格的雕塑。

    这种建筑上带来的愉悦感让人能够感受到当地的文化氛围。对于将大量旅游时间花在购物中心里的游客而言，这一点也许至关重要。戈登伯格表示，这里的顾客有60%都是游客，他们平均在这里要待上四个小时。Value Retail旗下的其他购物中心也会吸取当地的文化。科茨沃尔德附近的英国购物中心就在牛津市外，模仿了英国东南部的小村庄风情。而另一个靠近意大利帕尔马的购物中心以威尔第歌剧为主题。

    戈登伯格告诉我：“我们想让这里变得舒适。这可是度假。人们完全放松下来的时候才会寻欢作乐。”

    购物中心还设计了奢侈品培训项目，帮助发展中国家的游客轻松舒适地浏览高端品牌，避免他们在这些店铺面前感到不安。

    La Roca del Vallès was once little more than a sleepy Catalan village (pop. 7,000) surrounded by farmland, 35 minutes northeast of Barcelona. Now, that farmland is the home of outlet mall La Roca Village, a purpose-built simulation of a Catalan town, packed with high-end outlet stores.

    Last year, La Roca Village attracted 3.3 million shoppers, mostly foreigners, which makes it the most visited tourist attraction in Barcelona—superseding even Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí’s epic and internationally famous Sagrada Familia cathedral.

    Travelers have always shopped, for handicrafts, unfamiliar foods, or silly t-shirts. But in recent years, as citizens of BRICS nations and other developing countries have begun to travel, vacation shopping has changed. For many newbie travelers, buying brand-name goods has become a central point of tourism, a way to participate in developed world consumerism and show the folks back home they’ve indeed been abroad.

    The boom has been most notable among Chinese travelers, who’ve celebrated their new ability to globetrot with sights-and-malls bus trips across the U.S. and shopping-heavy versions of the old Grand Tour of Europe. Next year, Chinese travelers are expected to buy more luxury goods abroad than tourists from all other countries combined.

    But shopping tourism is far from a Chinese phenomenon, and Spain in general—and Barcelona in particular —offers an object lesson in how visitor flows from developing countries have changed the face of tourism.

    Spain ranked second in the world in 2012 for revenue from tourism spending, according to a new report from the UN’s World Tourism Organization, with $1.1 billion spent on shopping in the country by visitors from outside the E.U. And Madrid and Barcelona were tied for second, behind London, in a shopping index ranking of European cities put together by the Economist Intelligence Unit and Global Blue, a tourism shopping tax refund company.

    While only 250,000 Chinese people visited Spain last year, 1.6 million Russians did, an increase of 31.6% over 2012.

    “Because brands are so global and because emerging markets are emerging, there are aspirational factors,” says Michael Goldenberg, the New York-born head of the Spanish operations of Value Retail, which owns the La Roca mall and eight others in Europe. “Why are they all coming to Europe on vacation? To see where culture and sophistication come from. And they want to live like Europeans. Part of that is fulfilled by buying brands.”

    Goldenberg was working in real estate investment banking at Bankers Trust when the firm invested in Value Retail’s first shopping village, Bicester Village in the U.K., and he joined the company in 1996, at age 27.

    As we walk down the central avenue of the mall, the lanky Goldenberg points out the architectural details that mimic small-town Catalonia.

    We start our tour in the central plaza surrounded by government-style buildings (a Loewe outlet sits on the ground floor of the town hall), then pass through a comfortable bourgeois neighborhood and into a very tidy version of a factory zone. The streets are covered in cobble or large paving stones, the roofs are tiled, the colors tend toward the creams, and the plazas between the blocks feature sculptures in the style of Antoni Gaudí.

    This architectural recreation offers the sensation of a local cultural experience, which may be key for visitors who are passing a sizable chunk of their vacation at the mall. Sixty percent of the shoppers are tourists and they spend an average of four hours here, Goldenberg says. Value Retail’s others malls also simulate the local culture: the English mall near the Cotsworlds, outside Oxford, mimics a village in southeastern England, while one near Parma, Italy is based on Verdi’s operas.

    “It’s supposed to be comfortable. It’s vacation. When you relax, you have fun,” Goldenberg tells me.

    The mall is also designed as luxury-on-training-wheels to make developing country tourists feel comfortable among high-end brands whose stores might normally intimidate them.