China outbound tips

It’s one of the biggest questions in global tourism: What the hell is happening to tourism from China? It’s a question a lot of us tried to answer throughout 2023 after China reopened – on January 8 – after 3 years of lockdown.

The outbound travel recovery in China is stuck at just over half of 2019 levels, but there’s at least one promising sign of future demand: Domestic tourism is 90% above 2019 levels.

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The head of China’s civil aviation regulator, Song Zhiyong, met with the U.S. Ambassador in Beijing Nicholas Burns, and exchanged views on pushing for a substantial increase in flights between the two countries, the regulator said on Wednesday.

In a significant rebound fueled by heightened summer travel demand, China’s Trip.com Group posted a net revenue of RMB 13.7 billion ($1.9 billion) in the third quarter, marking a 99% increase over 2022 and 31% increase from 2019 levels.

Australia has recommenced visa processing for Chinese group travel, Australia’s Ministry of Trade and Tourism announced on Monday.

In just the past few days, there have been two key moves that ease restrictions for travel from China to the U.S. Tourism officials have been clear that the lifting of these restrictions is critical to a full recovery –though key hurdles remain. On Thursday, China lifted pandemic-era group tour restrictions for the U.S. and other key markets. Before the lift, Chinese travel agencies were banned from selling outbound group or package travel to the U.S.

Southeast Asia’s tourist economies are set to be leading beneficiaries of China‘s scrapping of travel bans as they have steered clear of the COVID-19 tests before entry that Europe, Japan and the United States have imposed on Chinese visitors.

More than half of Chinese say they will put off travel abroad, for periods from several months to more than a year, even if borders reopened tomorrow, a study showed on Tuesday, a sign that consumer recovery from Covid-19 measures will take time.

Visitor arrivals to Japan jumped to nearly 1 million in November, the first full month after the country scrapped Covid-19 curbs that effectively halted tourism for more than two years, data showed on Wednesday.

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South Korean and Japanese shop owners, Thai tour bus operators and K-pop groups are among those celebrating China’s border reopening as businesses around Asia rekindle ties with the region’s largest economy.

China on Saturday marked the first day of “chun yun”, the 40-day period of Lunar New Year travel known pre-pandemic as the world’s largest annual migration of people, bracing for a huge increase in travellers and the spread of COVID-19 infections.

If the sudden dropping of all restrictions by the Chinese government caught travel agents and tour operators off-guard, it begs the question: why? 

India is projected to surpass a rapidly aging China as the world’s most populous country this year, a development that Skift founder and CEO Rafat Ali and Senior Research Analyst Seth Borko said would have enormous implications for the travel industry during the Skift Megatrends event in New York City on January 10.

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Some stores in via Montenapoleone, the heart of Milan’s most exclusive shopping area, are displaying clothes and accessories dedicated to the Lunar New Year after two years disrupted by the pandemic even though Chinese tourists are yet to return in big numbers.

An elephant camp in Thailand has purchased six new jumbos to welcome tourists and returning Chinese visitors, offering activities from elephant rides to elephant showers, the owner said.

While Chinese travel demand accelerates to pre-pandemic levels, the global tourism industry is still not fully ready to service it, according to some panelists this week at an ITB Berlin session titled “Outlook of Chinese Tourism Market 2023.” 

China said that it will reopen its borders to foreign tourists for the first time in the three years since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic by restoring the issuance of all types of visas from Wednesday.

Japan’s service-sector sentiment rebounded in February for the first time in four months, a government survey showed on Wednesday, a sign that the removal of COVID-19 curbs is giving a much-needed boost to the country’s sluggish consumption.