Tourists pose for a group selfie in front of the Temple of Heaven during the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holiday in Beijing on Oct 4, 2020. (PHOTO / XINHUA)

The revival in domestic tourism experienced by China during the Golden Week holiday has stoked hopes abroad that Chinese tourists are still willing to travel farther afield, but travel experts caution that any global tourism recovery likely hinges on progress with a coronavirus vaccine.

China recorded 637 million domestic tourists over the eight-day national holiday in October, which generated revenue of US$69.8 billion－79 percent of last year's take, statistics from China's Ministry of Culture and Tourism show.

The figures pointed to a considerable improvement from the three-day Dragon Boat Festival in June, when only 48.81 million visits were recorded, accounting for 50.9 percent of last year's level.

As Chinese tourists were responsible for one out of eight international trips in 2019, Chinese outbound tourism would be a major force in the recovery of the international tourism market, said Wolfgang Arlt, director of the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute

"This is clearly a strong sign that Chinese people are very keen to travel again and to engage in tourism activities," said Dimitrios Buhalis, deputy director of the International Centre for Tourism and Hospitality Research at Bournemouth University in the UK.

"China is getting out of the pandemic faster than other countries around the world, which dealt with the pandemic differently, and as a result we can see that domestic tourism recovered faster during the Golden Week," Buhalis said.

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Wolfgang Arlt, director of the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute, said China's recent tourism turnaround "has shown the world that Chinese still have enough money to travel and also are not afraid to be in crowded environments like railway stations or national parks".

"In the rest of the world, people are looking with envy at how all these people are enjoying themselves in China, and also at the low numbers of COVID-19 infections in other Asian countries like Vietnam and Thailand, while Europe and the Americas witness an increase in infections and－to a lesser degree－of deaths resulting from the virus," he said.

Restrictions on travel introduced in response to the pandemic are hitting global tourism hard, with data from the World Tourism Organization, or UNWTO, showing a 70 percent fall in international arrivals for the first eight months of 2020.

The drop for the year to the end of August represents 700 million fewer arrivals compared with the same period in 2019 and translates into a loss of US$730 billion in export revenues from international tourism. The loss is more than eight times that seen in the tourism sector during the 2009 global financial crisis.

Arlt pointed out that the UNWTO numbers for the eight months include those trips made from the Chinese mainland in January, when the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions each received more than 2 million arrivals from the Chinese mainland, and Thailand welcomed more than 1 million. "Without these visits, the decrease in international travel would have been even worse," he said.

Major force

As Chinese tourists were responsible for one out of eight international trips in 2019, Arlt said Chinese outbound tourism would be a major force in the recovery of the international tourism market, especially for many destinations that do not have a major domestic market and rely heavily on Chinese visitors.

Buhalis said: "In the short to medium term, outgoing leisure travel will most likely to be discouraged as the pandemic is still at dangerous levels in many regions around the world, but in the long run, it is clear that Chinese tourists will contribute to international tourism globally."

In a bid to help revive its tourism industry, Thailand last month rolled out a special tourist visa scheme, which saw the arrival of two batches of Chinese visitors, after the country closed its borders in March to stem the spread of COVID-19.

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The Hong Kong SAR and Singapore have reached an in-principle agreement to open a so-called air travel bubble, which will allow people to travel between the two Asian economies without requiring restrictive quarantine measures.

"I am convinced that we will see two positive effects in the coming months: In East and Southeast Asia, the defeat of the virus will mean that travel can be restarted without quarantine measures, but with strict rules for testing and wearing masks," Arlt said.

"For other parts of the world, the vaccines, which hopefully will become available from next month, will change the situation gradually and will allow bubbles and corridors also for trips to Europe and other destinations."

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