MADRID/FRANKFURT - Chinese tourists have overtaken Germans as the world's biggest-spending travellers after a decade of robust growth in the number of Chinese holidaying abroad, the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) said on Thursday.

Chinese tourists, known for travelling in organised tours and snapping up luxury fashion abroad, spent $102 billion on foreign trips last year, outstripping deep-pocketed travellers from Germany and the United States.

Chinese tourists spent 41 percent more on foreign travel in 2012 than the year before, beating the close to $84 billion both German and US travellers parted with last year.

Tourists from other fast-growing economies with swelling middle classes, like Russia and Brazil, also increased spending in 2012. In recession-hit Europe, however, French and Italian tourists reined in their holiday budgets.

"The impressive growth of tourism expenditure from China and Russia reflects the entry into the tourism market of a growing middle class from these countries," said UNWTO Secretary-General Taleb Rifai.  

The German Travel Association (DRV) said it was to be expected that the Chinese would eventually overtake Germans in terms of spending, given that the country had more inhabitants than North America, Russia and Europe put together.

"But that they have overtaken us already is astonishing," DRV president Juergen Buechy said.

The Chinese make more long-haul trips than Germans, who typically go to Mediterranean destinations, meaning that the average spend per holiday was greater, he added.