Outbound tourism on the road to recovery

In the early morning of Feb 6, Li Nan, a tour guide from China Tourism Group, was busy helping tourists check in their baggage at Beijing Capital International Airport for a long-awaited trip to Singapore.

The 15 travelers made up the first Singapore-bound tour group departing from Beijing since the country resumed outbound group travel on Monday. Outbound group tour services have been suspended in China over the past three years due to COVID-19.

"I am really excited today," Li said, adding that it marks a rebound and a new beginning of the domestic tourism industry.

Besides Singapore, travel agencies are permitted to organize group tours to 19 other countries and regions including Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Russia and New Zealand.

Also starting on Monday, cross-border travel between the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong and Macao was fully resumed.

Dai Bin, head of the China Tourism Academy, said China's outbound tourism market is expected to see a sustained recovery this year thanks to the optimized COVID-19 protocol.

According to data from online travel agency Ctrip.com, the realtime search volume for outbound tour products on its platform surged five times when the new policy was announced on Jan 20.

Travel portal Tuniu said the number of bookings made from Feb 6 to 12 for overseas trips is estimated to double that of last week.

Many domestic airlines including Spring Airlines and China Southern Airlines also reported a high occupancy rate in international flights and plan to add more flights to meet the growing demands for outbound travel.

China had remained the largest outbound tourism market worldwide for several years before the pandemic hit. In 2019, Chinese tourists made 155 million overseas trips, with consumption abroad worth $133.8 billion.

Paul Pruangkarn, chief of staff at the Pacific Asia Travel Association, said Chinese tourists are an essential part of global tourism.

The resumption of China's outbound travel is injecting strong impetus into tourism in the Asia-Pacific region and into the recovery of the global economy, he said.

Destination countries such as Thailand, Singapore and Cambodia have extended warm hospitality to first arrivals from China.

"We are extremely delighted to receive these first tour groups today, and look forward to more Chinese tourists coming back to Thailand," Yuthasak Supasorn, governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, said at a welcoming ceremony held in Bangkok on Monday.

TAT predicted that Thailand will receive 7 million tourists from China this year, roughly 63 percent of the pre-epidemic level in 2019.

However, outbound tourism is still at the preliminary stage of recovery, said Sun Guizhen, secretary-general of the China Association of Travel Services, adding that major constraints include the limited number of international flights, high costs and inadequate hoteliers.

Industry insiders said that it requires the joint efforts of regulators, business entities, employees and tourists to achieve a full recovery. Some travel service providers therefore are re-collecting resources and conducting training to remedy the industrial chain.

So far, Ctrip.com has launched nearly 1,200 outbound tour packages. Tuniu offered 400 overseas trip products on its platform, most of which are for small-scale tour groups.

The outbound travel market is set to see a more apparent boom during this year's May Day holiday, experts predicted.