Chinese cities, industry move to tap global tourism
With the tourism industry gradually recovering from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese cities and industry players are stepping up efforts to strengthen their footprint in the global travel market as they move to welcome the expected growing number of international visitors.
“Accelerating economic recovery and promoting diversification will be one of the major focuses of our policy implementation next year,” Lei Wai-nong, secretary for economy and finance of Macao Special Administrative Region government, said.
“We will follow the requirements for building Macao into a world center of tourism and leisure, promote diversified development of tourism and leisure, and strive to make the industry better and stronger,” he said in a speech at the 2022 Global Partner Summit, organized by Chinese online travel agency Trip.com Group. The event was held in Macao on Friday.
Dai Bin, president of China Tourism Academy, said “exciting changes” have been seen in Chinese inbound and outbound travel market since this year, as evidenced by the cancellation of “circuit breaker measures” for international flights, the growing number of international flights, the shortening of the quarantine period for overseas arrivals, etc.
“These exciting changes signify that the tourism industry will embrace a positive development by the end of this year or the start of next year,” he said, citing an example that 44 percent of Chinese tourists are willing to embark on long-distance travel to places like Europe when the COVID-19 pandemic ends.
Dai added that leading Chinese tourism enterprises including Trip.com have sped up their pace in exploring the international markets and are promoting innovative development both in domestic and overseas markets in a bid to gain a strong foothold globally as the industry gradually recovers.
James Liang, chairman and co-founder of Trip.com Group, said travel has great significance in terms of innovation and heritage. The recovery and prosperity of the global tourism industry is a long-term trend, which will not be hindered by short-term difficulties, he said.
“We play an important role in bringing people together from around the world. It’s our mission to help build communication and innovation, using our travel platform to create new value for the industry,” he said.
Jane Sun, CEO of Trip.com Group, said the company has deepened its connection with overseas partners by adopting a “globalization plus localization” operating strategy and has achieved remarkable progress.
The number of downloads of Trip.com’s mobile app made it into the world’s top 10 in the travel category for the first time in the first half of the year. “This is a cheerful milestone for us,” she said.
The company saw a triple-digit growth in hotel bookings across key Asia-Pacific markets this year compared to the same period in 2019. Global air ticket bookings increased by 100 percent in 2022 on a yearly basis.
“The early recovery of global markets has given us confidence. We will continue looking for more possibilities to better serve our partners and users by building an improved travel ecosystem to meet users’ needs,” Sun said.
“Although the road ahead is still uncertain, we want to explore more opportunities and use cooperation, technology, and service to promote the tourism industry together with our travel partners.”