Chinese tourists visit the Grand Palace scenic spot in Bangkok, Thailand on May 1, 2023. (PHOTO / XINHUA)

China's outbound tourism market has recovered with outbound destinations receiving 40.37 million trips from the Chinese mainland in the first half of this year, according to China Tourism Academy's official WeChat account.

Short-distance outbound travel was the first to recover, with 93.9 percent of tourists concentrated in Asia, said the report released on Sunday.

From the perspective of popular areas for outbound tourism, tourists preferred East Asia and Southeast Asia, of which East Asia received the largest number of tourists from the Chinese mainland, accounting for 83.92 percent.

In the first half of this year, passenger traffic on international routes recovered to 23.0 percent of that in 2019.

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Airport representatives give away Dutch souvenirs — painted wooden tulips — to Chinese tourists at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands on March 26, 2023. (PHOTO / XINHUA)

The international passenger traffic in June bounced back to 41.6 percent of the same period in 2019, according to the report, citing data from Civil Aviation Administration of China.

In terms of popular overseas destinations, Thailand and Japan were in the first tier, receiving more than 10 percent of the outbound tourists.

The second tier included Singapore and South Korea, which received 5 percent and 10 percent of the outbound tourists from the Chinese mainland.

The sources of outbound tourists were mainly concentrated in economically developed provinces and cities of the Chinese mainland.

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Tourists from Guangdong, Shanghai, Beijing, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Fujian became the main force of outbound tourism.