Travel bug set to hit more this season
The surge in outbound tourism shows no signs of abating over Spring Festival as Chinese travelers continue to embrace their wanderlust
Increasingly favorable visa policies, easier and more abundant travel options and rising incomes are continuing to fuel Chinese people’s enthusiasm for travel.
Zhang Jianxun routinely likes to get away at weekends and during major holidays.
“I felt traveling was the only way for me to relax after intense periods of work,” says the 32-year-old resident of Hunan province’s capital Changsha.
The owner of a private English language training business often spends two or three days in Shanghai, Guangdong province’s Guangzhou or Zhejiang province to recharge his batteries.
“It’s nice to have a change of scene in a matter of just a few hours, and the high-speed railway network has made travel short and sweet,” he explains.
Zhang recently had an eight-day trip to Dubai with his parents in mid-January.
“I noticed Dubai has a visafree policy and I have always been curious about the special charm of the Middle East, so I went for it,” he says.
Zhang is one of the ever-expanding army of Chinese travelers, who have left their footprint in all four corners of the world.
Chinese people made 129 million overseas trips in 2017, a rise of 9.17 percent compared with the previous year, according to the national tourism work conference meeting held in Xiamen, Fujian province, in early January.
It has consolidated the status of China as the world’s biggest source of outbound travelers.
This number is expected to grow by 4.5 percent year-onyear to reach 134 million by the end of this year.
Tens of thousands of tourists have booked trips during the upcoming Spring Festival holiday, China’s biggest online travel agency Ctrip reports.
More than 60 percent of travelers have opted for expe-
The high-speed railway network has made travel short and sweet.” Zhang Jianxun, 32-year-old resident of Hunan province’s capital Changsha
riences in more than 280 destinations across more than 60 countries.
As of early January, bookings to destinations in Southeast Asia, Japan, Canada, Australia and Europe have been brisk for the Spring Festival, the travel agency says.
Family groups have accounted for 70 percent of this total.
“A considerable number of countries have offered visafree or visa-on-arrival entry, which have made outbound travel very convenient,” says Peng Liang, director of Ctrip’s public relations department.
As of early January, a total of 67 countries and regions abroad have offered visa-free or landing-visa permits to Chinese citizens.
Rwanda began offering landing visas at the beginning of the year, and South Korea granted 15-day visa-free entry until March 31 to Chinese travelers who have visited the country in the past five years or who have bought tickets worth more than $188 to the Winter Olympics Games through designated travel agencies.
Barbados, the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis, Serbia, Tunisia, Qatar and Gabon all sweetened their visa polices last year in a bid to attract more Chinese tourists.
Tourist numbers have grown significantly in countries that have recently relaxed their visa policies, according to Ctrip.
Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Maldives, Mauritius, Morocco, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt are expected to be the top destinations for this year’s Spring Festival.
In addition to relaxing visa policies, favorable exchange rates, increasing numbers of flight routes and special tour services targeting Chinese travelers have all made Southeast Asian countries, especially Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia, popular destinations for Chinese holidaymakers.
Laos enjoyed the biggest growth in the number of Chinese tourists, a 110 percent increase during 2017, with more than 500,000 visits made by Chinese nationals to the country.
Thailand received 9.5 million Chinese visitors in 2017, an increase of 9 percent over 2016. Chinese tourists became the biggest force in Cambodia’s tourism market by contributing over 1 million visits last year, a rise of 45 percent. Vietnam also saw a huge surge in the number of Chinese travDALLAS rising 48.6 percent to just over 4 million visits in 2017.
China’s domestic tourism market also witnessed a boom during 2017. Over 5 billion trips were made across China last year, an increase of 11.08 percent over the previous year, according to Li Jinzao, head of the China National Tourism Administration.
This means that every Chinese person made 3.7 trips on average last year.
Total tourism income reached 4.57 trillion yuan ($715.3 billion) last year, a 69-percent jump compared with 2012, according to Li.
The number of domestic trips is expected to hit 5.5 billion this year, generating 5.05 trillion yuan in tourism income.
The rapid development of China’s high-speed rail network helped contribute to the prosperity of the domestic tourism market, delivering more than 7 billion passengers last year, as opposed to 5 billion in 2016.
Many travelers in eastern China opted to use the rail network to reach destinations in the central and western parts of the country, thanks to new rail lines opening in 2017.
The Baoji-Lanzhou highspeed railway opened in July and cut travel times by 7 hours to roughly 10 hours from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong province’s Guangzhou to northwestern Gansu province’s capital Lanzhou.
Bookings to Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia Hui and Xinjiang Uygur autonomous regions each more than doubled during the following National Day holiday, major online travel agency Tuniu reports.
The Wuhan-Jiujiang highspeed rail line that opened in September now connects central Hubei’s provincial capital Wuhan to Jiujiang in East China’s Jiangxi province in less than two hours.
In addition, the ChongqingLanzhou and Xi’an-Chengdu high-speed rail connections have all helped to make travel easier across the country.
The China National Tourism Administration is currently looking to set up a national tourism industry fund to cope with the surging demand for domestic travel. The fund of between 30-50 billion yuan would encourage more businesses to engage in tourism development.
Last year, a total of 1.5 trillion yuan was poured into China’s domestic tourism sector.
With better infrastructure and a wealth of interesting projects in the pipeline, it looks likely that increasing numbers of Chinese people will be tempted to hit the road.