Budget Travelers Slow Down Chinese Domestic Travel Recovery Chinese domestic travel impeded by anti-spending 'special forces'

25.08.2023 - 13:35 / skift.com

When graduate student Cai Zhishan decided to spend her Labour Day holidays in northern China, she wished she had enough money to hire a car for the more-than 4,000km (2,500 mile) round trip – the equivalent of driving from New York to Los Angeles.

Instead, she chose “travelling like special forces,” a new trend in China that has emerged as a symptom of the underlying weakness in household consumption, and which is casting a shadow over a post-pandemic recovery in domestic tourism.

Cai, 22, mostly took slow trains and buses as she made her way from the city of Hangzhou where she studies, around the northern Shanxi province, and back.

To get to the ancient temples, pagodas and grottoes she wanted to visit, she walked roughly 30,000 steps a day. For accommodation, she chose overnight trains and cheap hostel beds.

Over nine days, she spent just 2,500 yuan ($362).

“I don’t have much money, but I like to travel,” Cai said. “I can control the expenses, to go to many places for the least amount of money, but it is really tiring.”

On social media, the hashtag “special forces travel” – which refers to an aggressive assault on a tourist area to see and do as much as possible for as little money one can spend – went viral before and during the Labour Day break starting in late April.

Cai was inspired by the online discussions, like many other Chinese travellers who surprised with their thriftiness.

Ministry of Culture and Tourism data showed a boom in domestic travel this year, as many Chinese made up for the three years of COVID-19 restrictions that kept them largely stuck at home.

During the May holiday break, which for most Chinese covered the April 28-May 3 period, 274 million trips were made, up 19 percent from 2019 before the pandemic.

But total spending was 148 billion yuan ($21 billion), on par with 2019, meaning travellers spent an average of 540 yuan ($76.7) in 2023 versus 603 yuan ($85.7) in 2019.

In another sign of tight pockets, international trips by Chinese tourists this year remain a fraction of pre-pandemic levels.

“Chinese overall are not ready to spend as much as before and, even if the government tries … to entice consumption and reduce excess savings, I doubt it will manage,” said Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for Asia-Pacific at Natixis Research.

“People need jobs and higher wages to start spending big again.”

Domestic consumption, which Chinese policymakers want to play a greater role in powering the world’s second-largest economy, has recovered since COVID restrictions were lifted in December, but has consistently underwhelmed so far this year.

China’s struggling property market, record high youth unemployment and broader worries over job stability, as well as government parsimony