Within half an hour of China announcing policy changes, online searches for travel abroad surged to a three-year high, according to Chinese travel booking companies. File Photo.
New Delhi: With China set to reopen its borders come January, Asian countries as well as some European giants are bracing for an influx of Chinese travellers. The Chinese people too, fed up of being under stringent lockdown for the last three years in an attempt to stop the spread of the viral infection, are rushing to plan overseas travel.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Beijing prevented Chinese citizens from getting passports or leaving mainland China unless they had a valid reason, usually for business. Most countries now are wary of this sudden influx of Chinese travellers given that China is reeling from a Covid-19 wave driven by Omicron sub-variant BF.7, which has already spread rapidly crippling the country’s overburdened public health infrastructure.
A host of countries, including India, have started random testing of international travellers arriving at airports and a few others have made negative Covid-19 tests mandatory for those travellers originally coming from China. Countries including the United States, Japan and India have imposed restrictions on tourists arriving from the mainland. Yet others, are hoping to cash in on the sudden travel boom which seems to have captured the popular Chinese imagination. Australia for instance, has made no changes regarding its rules permitting Chinese travellers in the country. Countries such as Thailand, Singapore and other Southeast Asian nations are preparing travel packages and offering hotpot buffets hoping to make the most of the relaxation in Covid-19 restrictions.
Beginning January 8, Chinese tourists will no longer need to quarantine on returning home, the Chinese government announced this week, a move that triggered a huge spike in bookings from what was the world’s largest outbound travel market in 2019 — before the Covid-19 pandemic affected the travel and tourism industry.
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic which hit China in 2019 and rapidly engulfed the rest of the world causing millions of deaths worldwide and forcing countries to make sweeping changes to travel rules as well as triggering strict curbs on international travel, these countries were most popular with Chinese travellers – Thailand, Japan, South Korea, United States, Vietnam and Philippines.
Within half an hour of China announcing policy changes, online searches for travel abroad surged to a three-year high, according to Chinese travel booking companies. The Chinese are now looking at several other tourism options wanting to explore foreign shores.
The once USD 255 billion a year in global spending by Chinese tourists ground to a virtual halt during the Covid-19 pandemic, leaving a gaping hole in the Asian market, so that countries ranging from Thailand to Japan which had depended on China as the largest source of foreign visitors found tourism revenues dipping.
International flights to and from China are currently at just 8% of pre-pandemic levels, VariFlight data shows, but airlines are looking to ramp up capacity as authorities ease Covid-19 driven limits on the number of flights.
Malaysia Airlines and Vietnamese budget carrier VietJet Aviation (VJC.HM) said they hope to restore China flights to pre-pandemic levels by June 2023, while others such as Singapore Airlines (SIAL.SI) and Australia’s Qantas Airways (QAN.AX) refused to give detailed targets as the situation is still a little uncertain.
Post the pandemic, the Chinese are looking at the US, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, India, as well as the all-time favourites of Thailand, South Korea, Philippines and Southeast Asian islands as popular destinations to flock to.
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