Agencies ready to resume outbound tours
▶ China’s reopening to inject more than $200b into global tourism
Chinese travel agencies are prepared for the resumption of outbound group tour services starting from Monday, with the first batch of tourists set out for countries including Thailand and Laos.
Industry insiders expect a significant increase in outbound tours and travelers starting from March, and the influx of Chinese tourists is expected to inject new momentum into the global economic recovery, especially in countries in Southeast Asia.
“On Monday, a group of around 40 tourists will travel to Bangkok in Thailand, which will depart from Guangzhou at early morning and arrive at 8:05 am,” China Spring Tour told the Global Times.
This would be the firm’s first outbound tour group in 2023. The company said that the sixday, five-night tour to Phuket was sold out on the day it was released, thanks to its comparatively low cost, convenient visa services and travel time.
The company will launch two other group tours to Bangkok in Thailand and Vientiane in Laos on Monday. As of Friday, it had sold nearly 1,000 outbound travel products, including group tours, self-guided trips, visa services and ticket and hotel bookings.
China Spring Tour’s experience reflects the Chinese travelers’ eagerness to restart outbound travel, after the Ministry of Culture and Tourism announced on January 20 that China would roll out a pilot program to resume outbound group travel services to 20 countries starting from Monday.
South China’s Hainan-based CAISSA Tourism Group said on its official WeChat account recently that its outbound travel business has fully restarted, with dozens of outbound travel products to be released, while the first tour group to Europe in 2023 will depart on Tuesday.
Outbound travel is expected to warm up this spring, with the return of industry employees, publicity about overseas travel and an increase in international flights at the end of March, although a full recovery will take time, said Zhou Weihong, deputy general manager of China Spring Tour.
China’s resumption of outbound group tours could bring more than $200 billion back to international tourism, the Financial Times reported in January. In 2019, before the pandemic, 155 million Chinese traveled abroad and spent more than $133.8 billion, according to data released by the China Tourism Academy.