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EconomyChina Economy
Foreign tourist arrivals to China suddenly surge as visa relaxations fuel travel searches
Travel platforms such as Fliggy and Trip.com see huge influx in interest as Beijing makes it easier to transit
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Ralph Jennings
Published: 6:00am, 20 Dec 2024
Within minutes of China announcing its latest relaxation of visa rules for foreign travellers this week, searches on travel platform Trip.com skyrocketed.
The travel service provider said its North American site saw a 163 per cent surge in the first half-hour, while searches on its European site were up 85 per cent. Inquiries from Canada, France and Russia led the pack.
Tuesday’s decision by Beijing to extend visa-free transit to 10 days – up from only three to six days – for passport holders of 54 nations came just weeks after clearing citizens of 38 countries to enter visa-free for up to a month.
Tourism to China from the countries eligible for visa-free transit has grown by 189 per cent this year over 2023, according to Trip.com data.
The relaxation of entry restrictions have followed Beijing’s push to attract more foreign tourists and investors since the country lifted its pandemic travel restrictions and reopened borders in January 2023. President Xi Jinping has also called for “building national strength in tourism” and increasing people-to-people exchanges, including with the US.
China’s abundant tourist attractions, cultural heritage, relatively low prices and new visa-free arrival arrangements have been enticing foreigner travellers this month – a time of the year when school holidays in parts of Asia normally lead to an increase in travel anyway.
Singaporean financier Brendon Au visited Xian, the capital of northwest China’s Shaanxi province, on a 10-city China trip that ended this month. He basked in the reds and oranges of the late autumn leaves and felt the chill of a climate much cooler than he is used to in his tropical homeland.
Au previously visited China, but he had mostly kept to the south. The 36-year-old investment fund operator reached Xian to see unique historical sites such as the famed terracotta warriors – a collection of sculpted clay soldiers discovered guarding the tomb of the first Chinese emperor – and to taste “many old dishes not found elsewhere”.
“It was a welcome change to taste the different cuisines of each region in the late autumn chill, without breaking the bank,” said Au, who spent about US$350 a day on his tour.
The weakening of China’s yuan against the US dollar has become another factor attracting tourists. The offshore yuan’s depreciation broke a psychological threshold of 7.3 per US dollar in the wee hours of Thursday as the US Federal Reserve’s unexpectedly cautious forecast for rate cuts next year strengthened the dollar.
Beijing-based travel platform Fliggy has reported its own boost in China-bound tourism this year.
“Based on the current flight-booking data, the number of tourists entering China in December has nearly doubled compared with last month and has surged more than tenfold compared with last year,” it said.
Fliggy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alibaba Group, which also owns the South China Morning Post.
Airlines offered just over 5.4 million seats on flights between mainland China and other parts of Asia this month, according to data compiled by the industry data platform OAG – representing a 33.6 per cent year-on-year increase.
“The proximity of [other parts of] Asia to China is a major factor in the high number of tourists from the region,” Fliggy said, noting that most one-way flights take less than four hours.
The top source countries this month have been Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand, Fliggy said.
The December rush offers a much-needed boost to the world’s second-largest economy, which is grappling with a property crisis, lingering unemployment concerns and hesitant consumer spending.
Song Seng Wun, economic adviser at CGS
Southeast Asians enjoy visiting parts of China where they can see snow or fallen leaves and experience the biting chill of impending winter, analysts in the region say.
School holidays in Singapore and Malaysia normally accelerate family travel at this time of year, said Song Seng Wun, an economic adviser at the Singapore-based financial services firm CGS. The Singapore dollar’s strength gives travellers a spending advantage in China, he added.
Travel agencies targeting Singapore had stepped up promotional offers in the second half of the year, Song said, adding that China, and especially less visited inland locales, still represented novelty.
“Singaporeans have been travelling so aggressively in the past two years since Covid tapered off that there’s a bit of travel fatigue with the usual locations,” Au said, referring to countries and cities closer to home.
To encourage tourism, China has, bit by bit, relaxed entry rules including visas. Japanese citizens were included in the visa-free travel scheme on November 30, just weeks after the inclusion of South Koreans.
Shanghai, mainland China’s most common port of entry, recorded more than 1.37 million visa-free arrivals by foreigners in the first 11 months of the year, 3.8 times the figure for the same span last year, Chinese news website thepaper.cn said.
