Gasping for getaways
Travel agencies are pitching popular ‘smog-escape routes’ as pollution propels Chinese to places with clean skies. Yang Feiyue and Erik Nilsson report.
Chinese travel itineraries are increasingly written by the sky. More than ever, “getaway” refers to escapes not only from the office but also from acrid air.
Urbanites are heading overseas for “breathers”, in every sense of the term.
Travel titans caught a whiff of the trend in late December, soon after Beijing issued its first and then second red smog alerts. The country’s largest online travel agency, Ctrip, for instance, has since started pitching “smog-escape routes” — with great success.
“Our app and website searches for destinations rise in pace with smog levels in users’ respective cities,” says Yan Xin, publicity manager of Ctrip.
More than 60 percent of Chinese cities reported high air pollution around Christmas. This gave oomph to overseas escapes’ allure during the New Year holiday’s three-day weekend, industry insiders say.
“Many customers moved their departure dates forward or switched from domestic to international destinations to escape the severe air pollution people expected around the New Year and the Spring Festival holiday (Feb 7-13),” Yan says.
Beijinger Zhang Guangqi took two extra days off around the New Year to visit Okinawa with his friend.
“It was a spontaneous decision,” Zhang says.
“I didn’t have any specific plans for my visit. I just wanted to escape the air.”
Still, smog caught up to many who’d escaped over the New Year as they returned — or tried to.
Pollution grounded 100 flights in Shandong province’s capital Jinan and closed all major expressways between Hebei province and neighboring Beijing, plus many throughout North, East and Central China during the return rush on Sunday, Xinhua reports.
International travel agencies from such countries as Singapore adjusted plans for citizens visiting the Chinese mainland in early December.
CTC Travel ordered its Beijing branches to give its 280 Singaporean visitors filtering facemasks, the Straits Times reports.
The newspaper quoted Dynasty Travel spokesperson Alicia Seah as saying: “We are worried. We’ve instructed our ground operators to stock up on masks and we will replace outdoor activities with indoor shopping trips or acrobatic shows, if need be.”
Singapore’s Chan Brothers Travel also dispensed masks and publicized an emergency hotline among its customers last month, the paper reports.
Ctrip’s top 10 international smog-escape routes around Christmas, according to bookings, were Japan, Thailand, Australia, Canada, Switzerland, New Zealand, the United States, Maldives, Mauritius and the United Arab Emirates.
Reservations for Japan’s Hokkaido, Tokyo, Osaka and Okinawa rocketed.
Thailand’s Bangkok, Phuket Island and Chiangmai have remained popular during the holiday period, although — perhaps unbeknown to many Chinese — the country’s capital and Phuket are often blanketed in smog.
The Phuket Gazette called Chinese arrivals “surprisingly resilient” given the island’s air pollution last year but said they weren’t too disheartened “because it didn’t differ much from what they were used to back home”.
A third of Chinese bookings for the following two months are to the islands of Jeju in South Korea, Bali in Indonesia, Boracay in the Philippines, Sabah in Malaysian Borneo and Guam.
Chinese are willing to splurge up to 30,000 yuan ($4,600) for highend packages to such long-haul destinations as Australia, the US, Canada and New Zealand during the period, according to Ctrip.
The company reports more than doubled growth in bookings for Australia and the US.
Popular among Canadian itineraries are a 10-day trip through the west coast, Banff National Park and Yellowknife. Many travelers to New Zealand took an 11-day excursion through Christchurch, Fox Glacier, Queenstown, Lake Tekapo, Auckland and Rotorua.
Ctrip’s top domestic smog-escape routes last month were Hainan province’s capital, Sanya; Heilongjiang’s provincial capital, Harbin; Yunnan’s provincial capital, Kunming, and Lijiang city; the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region’s Guilin; Fujian province’s Xiamen; Sichuan province’s Jiuzhaigou Valley; and Hunan province’s Zhangjiajie natural area.
Sanya topped the list, since it offers not only blue skies but also blue seas and warm weather, Yan says.
“Most visitors were from northern China,” he says.
“They wanted to escape both the smog and the cold.”
Also popular was a six-day tour through Sichuan’s capital, Chengdu, Jiuzhaigou, Dujiangyan and Huanglong. Spring Festival visits currently cost about 5,000 yuan on Ctrip.
While travel agencies have in the past month caught on to pitching clear skies, it has been three years since Fujian broadcast an ad, coaxing visitors to enjoy its clean air with the slogan: “Take a deep breath. You’re in Fujian.”
But while some Chinese destinationshave benefited from the rush to flee smoggy skies, air pollution has curbed inbound tourism for years.
The CNTA’s China Tourism Academy blames pollution for the contraction of visitors from overseas since 2012.
Indeed, it seems not only Chinese travel dreams are divined by the skies.