With China’s travel restrictions lifted, demand is strong among Chinese tourists. Here’s where these travelers plan to go and what they’d like to do.
11.5MN more Travel & Tourism jobs in China this year
In 2023, the May Day holiday ran one day longer than usual, with offices closed from 29 April through 3 May, and travelers took full advantage of the long weekend. Mainland China performance peaked on 30 April, with hotels reporting 90.9% occupancy and CNY865 average daily rate (ADR). For reference, occupancy the prior Sunday was 63.7% and ADR CNY503.
International flights during the holidays recovered to around 40% over the same period in 2019, with searches increasing by more than 60% compared to 2019.
When China’s long and lockdown-laden journey away from COVID finally reached its culmination in late 2022, the global travel industry breathed a sigh of relief. The fastest-growing, and one of the top per capita spending markets, was back in play. The expectations are sky high, but will those wishes match reality and will we see a resurgence in Chinese tourists travelling throughout 2023?
Unfortunately, this year's Qing Ming, also known as Tomb-Sweeping Day, which fell on a Wednesday (5 April), created a sudden stop to the growth recovery.
During the seven-day holiday period, starting from Lunar New Year’s Eve on 21 January, China’s hotel average daily rate (ADR) surpassed 2019 levels. Occupancy edged closer to the comparable before eventually surpassing it on day seven, which shows that many decided to take extra time to celebrate the holiday this year.
SiteMinder, which generates more than 100 million reservations annually for 35,000+ hotels across 150 countries, has seen a 37% increase in net reservations from Chinese travellers since mid-December, with booking increases accelerating by 27% between week commencing 22 January and week commencing 29 January.
Back in 2019, mainland China was the world’s largest outbound travel market with over 150 million outbound travelers. Since then, strong COVID-19 safety measures, including quarantine on arrival, have all but eliminated China’s inbound and outbound travel.
China’s decision to ditch its zero-Covid policy has triggered a surge in flight bookings, according to the latest data from ForwardKeys. And it’s the intra-regional neighbours in Asia who will reap the benefits the most.