In January, China dropped the majority of its “Zero COVID” policies, only requiring inbound travelers show a negative P.C.R. test from within 48 hours of travel for entry. Beginning Wednesday, August 30, that measure, too, will be dropped. Thus ends a three-plus-year period in which the country was at least partially shut down to tourism due to the coronavirus pandemic.
This summer, according to China Briefing, domestic travel appeared to surge but popular destinations were clearly lacking international visitors.
According to the World Travel & Tourism Council’s “Economic Impact 2023” report, China contributed $582.8 billion to the global travel and tourism sector in 2022, accounting for 3.3 percent of its GDP that year. While it was the second largest spend of any country (trailing only the United States), it was a 29.5 percent decrease from the year prior. Going back to 2019, China’s spending on travel and tourism was 1.82 trillion—again only trailing the United States.
Globally, the sector in 2022 was still 23 percent behind its 2019 peak (in terms of spending) but with China reopening, the WTTC expects that difference to soon be made up. Forecasting for 2023 in its entirety, the WTTC projects the sector to fall just 5 percent behind 2019 levels.
According to a recent survey Travel Agent hosted, just 12.4 percent of advisor respondents said their clients had interest in visiting Asia Pacific—trailing popular destinations like the U.S., Europe, Caribbean and Mexico, as well as South America, Africa and the Middle East.
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