The Chinese New Year travel rush begins on January 26, 2024, and Beijing Daxing International Airport is celebrating its first day of peak travel. Photo: Li Hao/GT
The upcoming Lunar New Year (CNY) holiday, also known as the Spring Festival holiday, is expected to signal a recovery in the tourism sector as ports across China are once again busy, with levels expected to reach the same level as 2019. It is expected. Industry insiders predict the tourism market will see the “hottest outbound tourism in five years” after China achieved comprehensive reciprocal visa waivers with 23 countries including Thailand, Singapore and the Maldives. .
Industry representatives said a recovery in tourism would accelerate economic recovery and boost public confidence. Moreover, China's solid economic base, visa ease, and large population are favorable factors for the long-term development of the outbound tourism market.
During this year's Lunar New Year holiday, a large number of inbound and outbound passengers will gather at international entry and exit points. The National Immigration Administration (NIA) said on Sunday that the average daily number of international arrivals is expected to reach 1.8 million, about 3.3 times that of last year's Spring Festival and comparable to the 2019 Spring Festival level.
According to the NIA, peak passenger numbers are expected at major international airports from February 8-11 and February 16-17. Land ports heading to Hong Kong and Macau are expected to see a peak in passenger numbers from February 11 to 15, with an estimated 198,000 passengers per day at Shenzhen Luohu Customs on the border with Hong Kong. It is expected.
Singapore and Thailand recently signed a reciprocal visa exemption agreement with China, and China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the reciprocal visa exemption between China and Singapore will come into effect on the eve of this year's Spring Festival, a Lunar New Year gift for China. said. Chinese and Singaporean.
“Inbound and outbound travel this year is different from previous years,” said Yang Jin-sung, director of the International Tourism Research Institute. is increasing,” he said. A developer and associate researcher at the China Tourism Academy (CTA) told the Global Times on Sunday.
Meanwhile, great progress has been made in visa facilitation, which gives confidence to Chinese tourists, Yang said.
The province's outbound tourism market has begun to reopen for the first time since early 2023, when China downgraded its COVID-19 control, moving toward a spring of recovery from a harsh winter, according to a report released Thursday by the CTA. .
With the strengthening of China's tourism market dynamics and residents' willingness to travel abroad, the pace of recovery of international tourism in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to accelerate significantly. In 2023, the number of overseas travelers in China will exceed 87 million. In 2024, the number of overseas travelers is predicted to reach 130 million.
Fully recovering
The couple from Beijing departed for their honeymoon in Thailand and arrived at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport at 11:49 pm local time on January 19 after a five-hour flight.
Thailand grants visa-free status to visitors from China and several other countries, so the wife of a couple surnamed Xu told Global Times on Sunday that when they arrived at immigration, , when I was preparing to enter Thailand, all the immigration booths were open and about hundreds of passengers from China, Japan, Europe and other countries and regions were queuing up for immigration. ing.
“About two-thirds of the passengers were Chinese. Thailand is very popular among many Chinese tourists,” Xu said.
The line was long, but it didn't take long for couples to rush through. During the immigration process, Chinese tourists simply present their entry ticket and passport, submit fingerprints, and take a photo to obtain an entry stamp and complete the process. According to Xu, it took only about two minutes.
“It was very quick. I didn't have to fill out an immigration card, or show a return ticket or hotel order. All I needed was my passport,” Xu said.
Many Chinese travelers prefer Southeast Asian countries as their top overseas travel destinations for the upcoming Chinese New Year holidays, with the Maldives, Singapore and Thailand in the top 10 on the list of popular destinations, according to a Global Times online poll. It's in.
According to the 2024 Lunar New Year tourism market forecast report released by China's leading travel booking platform Ctrip, when it comes to outbound tourism, short- and medium-distance outbound routes such as Southeast Asia, Japan, and South Korea are popular options. , popular destinations include Japan, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), Malaysia, Australia, Singapore, South Korea, Macau SAR, New Zealand and Vietnam, the company said in a report to the Global Times on Sunday. He said he is doing so.
Ctrip says that so far, overseas travel bookings during the Lunar New Year holiday have increased more than 10 times compared to last year.
Beijing-based Fan, whose parents currently live in Canberra, Australia, told the Global Times on Sunday that she finally had the chance to reunite with her family in Australia over this year's Chinese New Year holiday.
“Ever since COVID-19 precautionary measures were lifted in China over a year ago, I had been planning to go to Australia, but the flight tickets were too expensive for me. “It's now much cheaper and the visa application process is so much easier and I finally have the opportunity to spend Lunar New Year in the warm summer breeze of the southern hemisphere,” Fan said.
She has noticed that many of her Chinese friends have rekindled their interest in Australia, especially over the past year as relations between China and Australia have eased. One of Fan's friends traveled to the country to see a concert in December 2023, purchasing a round-trip ticket for just over 3,000 yuan (about $421). It's about the same price as a domestic flight! Fan said.
“Chinese e-commerce platforms such as Taobao sell all kinds of tickets and travel products to Australia's major tourist attractions,” Fan told the Global Times. “The most popular are the Great Barrier Reef diving experience and helicopter ride. We tried to book the tour a month in advance, but many tours were already sold out.”
Many of Fan's friends are also choosing to spend this year's Lunar New Year holidays overseas, including in Japan, Singapore and Thailand. “Normally, Chinese people go back to their hometowns to spend the holidays, but with overseas travel recovering rapidly this year, many young Chinese people are looking for other ways to enjoy their holidays,” she noted. did.
Inbound tourism
China has recently taken a number of measures to simplify procedures for foreigners coming to China, such as relaxing visa application requirements and simplifying visa application documents, as China continues to accelerate its opening-up to the outside world. It shows.
In 2023, inbound tourism began to recover due to policies such as visa waivers. However, during the three-year pandemic, many services now operate on smartphone apps and payment platforms that are difficult for foreigners to sign up and use, according to a Jan. 9 report in Caixin. This poses an additional challenge for foreigners. Visit China.
Although the number of arrivals has increased significantly thanks to a series of visa facilitation measures, the number of inbound tourists has not yet fully recovered. According to statistics from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, travel agencies nationwide welcomed 477,800 tourists to Japan in the first half of 2023, compared to 8,561,600 in the same period in 2019. Additionally, there is still much room for improvement in the convenience of inbound tourism, including visas, payments, transportation, and tourism services.
“Excluding policy support, inbound tourism is still on a slow recovery path,” Shu Xiaolei, marketing manager of China's CYTS Tours Holding Co., told the Global Times on Sunday. A full recovery could also take longer as the global tourism supply chain needs to be repaired after three years of closure due to the pandemic, he said.
(Web editor: Tian Yi, Zhong Wenxing)
