Foreign tourists starting to return, bringing a breath of fresh air to China’s economy

According to recent data, free-visa entry for travellers from some European and Southeast Asian countries is beginning to bear fruit with 13.1 million entries in the first quarter of 2024. In order to surpass pre-pandemic levels in 2025, the authorities are working to remove bans on foreigners in budget hotels.

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Beijing's bet on foreign tourism is beginning to bear fruit. This kind of news is a breath of fresh air in China’s otherwise uncertain economic picture, dragged down by the crisis of the real estate market.

Xinhua, China’s official news agency, today prominently reported that 13.1 million foreign travellers visited the country in the first quarter of 2024, up by 305.2 per cent over last year.

Some travel platforms note that foreign bookings for May Day jumped by more than 100 per cent compared to a year ago.

Such numbers should be read bearing in mind that in the first months of 2023 China had just come out of a total lockdown imposed by a Zero COVID-19 policy during which foreign tourists were extremely few.

The trend is clear enough. In recent months, the Chinese government has, in fact, bet heavily on tourism, with a new policy that allows citizens of some European and Southeast Asian countries to enter China without visa requirements for a period of up to 15 days.

Announced in 2023, the unilateral measure first covered six countries (Spain, France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Malaysia), later extended to six more European countries (Switzerland, Ireland, Hungary, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg) as well as Thailand and Singapore.

Initially expected to last a year, the measure was extended to the end of 2025.

Which of these countries have benefited the most so far? According to Ethan Lin, the CEO of the Klook platform, Southeast Asian countries have taken the lion's share.

Speaking at the UBS Asian Investment Conference in Hong Kong, he said that travel to China from Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand in 2024 is already surpassing pre-pandemic figures.

Visitors from these countries “don’t have that many places they can go that are visa-free,” Lin explained. Hence, “China has now become one of the major places that they really travel to.”

The revival of China’s tourist sector depends also on another important factor, namely greater openness of China’s cashless payment systems that in the past required Chinese bank accounts and payment apps and made things hard for outsiders.

Chinese authorities have been working to make the systems more workable for incoming visitors and have gone so far as to warn accommodation providers not to reject overseas guests.

For Klook's CEO, the flow of foreign tourists to China could be back to normal by next year. If his prediction comes true, it would be a remarkable achievement, considering that China ended 2023 with just 56 per cent of 2019's foreign arrivals.

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• china
• tourism
• foreign visitors
• covid-19
• pandemic
• growth
• visa-free