Travel service providers are eager to rejuvenate cross-border tourism in China, noticing a disparity in its recovery pace compared to domestic tourism. 

Chinese tourists visit the Giza Pyramids in Giza, Egypt, Oct. 4, 2023. [Photo/Xinhua]

While domestic travel has bounced back to pre-pandemic levels, international tourism has yet to catch up. In the prolonged eight-day Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holiday, 11.8 million entry and exit trips were made, standing at 85.1% of the 2019 level, according to the country's border inspection authorities. 

Ring Cao, a manager at travel agency Top View Travel and Trade, lamented the drastic drop in international visitors through her company. She said her company only received some 2,000 international guests to China so far this year, while that number was more than 50,000 back in 2019. 

Speaking at a press interview on Wednesday at ITB Asia, Asia's largest travel showcase, CEO of Trip.com Group Jane Sun pointed to constrained flight availability and protracted visa procedures as significant hindrances. She said it takes three to six months of visa processing time for travelers from the Schengen area and the U.S. to visit China.

Such hurdles also stand in the way in outbound travel. According to Virginia Lin, China trade director at Brand USA, an organization dedicated to promoting travel to the U.S., the biggest challenge in bringing more Chinese tourists to the U.S. is in flight capacity. The number of direct flights from Chinese cities to the U.S. stands at 48 per week currently, yet that number was somewhere around 350 back in 2019, Lin said.

Travel service providers are nonetheless optimistic and not sitting idle. 

This week, Trip.com Group threw a grand global partner summit in Singapore, inviting over 2,000 partners from all over the world to reconnect, underlining its commitment to revitalizing international ties.

During the summit, Sun unveiled the company's strategies for boosting inbound tourism. These include brand building, innovative content creation, and consumption subsidy. She also pledged to work with partners to ease digital payment and provide better language services, so as to facilitate international tourism in China.   

Sharing an encouraging perspective, Hermione Joye, sector lead of Travel and Vertical Search APAC at Google, said that China is "on the cusp of recovery." As the largest source of outbound tourism, China's airline capacity only stands at 55% of pre-COVID level and is expected to fully recover by the end of 2024, which speaks of the huge potential ahead, she said. 

Joye also pointed to the financial readiness of Chinese tourists, noting that Chinese people have the highest savings during the pandemic. "So when they do step out of China, the thought is that they're ready to spend and really get involved in the travel experiences," she said. 

James Liang, co-founder and chairman of Trip.com Group, also shared the optimism about the China market. 

Liang said normally the growth rate of travel demand in China is much higher than the country's GDP growth. "So if Chinese economy can grow – even during COVID – 5% to 6% a year, then the (travel) demand should have grown at least 10% a year," he said. "Our number is actually quite higher than that." 

"Chinese travelers' demand is still very robust. When flight capacity and the visa situation come back to normal in the near future, Chinese travelers will definitely come back," Liang said.

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