With the adjustment of entry and exit policies, the tourism industry is expected to accelerate recovery
Industry experts said that due to insufficient supply and still high short-term airline ticket prices, it will take some time for total travel demand to recover
On the evening of December 26, the National Health and Medical Commission issued a notice on the implementation of the “Class B and B control” comprehensive plan for new coronavirus infection. Since January 8, 2023, the nucleic acid test and centralized isolation of all employees after entry will be canceled and require According to the international epidemic situation and various service guarantee capabilities, outbound travel of Chinese citizens will resume in an orderly manner. Today, the National Immigration Administration also issued an announcement, effective January 8, 2023, to streamline immigration management policies and measures, including the orderly resumption of acceptance and approval of ordinary passports for Chinese citizens traveling abroad and visiting friends, and the resumption of processing of mainland residents for travel and business, Hong Kong visa, etc.
Today, the reporter integrated the data of many online travel platforms such as Mafengwo, Tongcheng, Fliggy, Tuniu and Qunar and found that the adjustment of entry-exit policies has brought great benefits to the tourism market, and it is expected that l tourism industry to accelerate its recovery.
Instant search volume for international airline tickets across multiple platforms has skyrocketed
Mafengwo’s data shows that after the announcement of the policy adjustment, searches for “outbound travel” on the platform increased by 460%. Among these, “visa”, “passport” and “strategy” are the three most searched keywords by tourists intending to go abroad: Bangkok, Tokyo, Chiang Mai, Singapore and Osaka are among the top five foreign destinations with the most instant visit popularity boost.
“Continued policy easing has put the desire for outbound travel on the agenda which has been suppressed for three years. The Spring Festival holiday is expected to become the first major turning point in the outbound travel market in three years”. Rao, director of the Mafengwo Tourism Research Institute, said in an analysis.
According to data from the Tongcheng platform, after the announcement of the policy adjustment, the instant search volume of international air tickets on the platform increased by 850%; instant visa search volume increased 10 times. The top three overseas destinations that Chinese tourists pay the most attention to are Japan, South Korea and Thailand. The most popular destinations for outbound flights are mainly Bangkok, Tokyo, Seoul, Los Angeles and Singapore. The top users of the search for outbound travel are from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
According to Qunar’s data, the number of international air ticket bookings on the platform increased fivefold within an hour of the news of the policy adjustment being released. According to Fliggy data, less than an hour after the policy was released, the number of international flight searches on the Fliggy platform increased more than 8 times, and the volume of inbound flight searches reached a three-year peak .
According to data from Tuniu, the popularity of outbound travel and other related searches on the platform has soared. Among them, overseas destination countries such as Japan, the United States, Thailand, South Korea and the Maldives, as well as overseas destination cities such as Phuket, Tokyo, Pattaya, Bali and New York, ranked highest in popularity of research.
It is reported that some platforms have already been preparing for the recovery of the outbound travel market. Mafengwo Raiders brand Polaris Raiders has prepared “official guides” for overseas destinations, covering visas, transportation, accommodation, food, must-see experiences and other information tourists need, and is committed to ensuring that tourists can obtain information new, accurate and complete strategies and authentic game novel.
It will take some time for total travel demand to recover
“With the optimization and adjustment of the entry-exit epidemic policy, everyone’s expectations of inbound and outbound travel will quickly turn into action, and bookings for international flights will start rapidly, especially inbound flights will be the first to break out.At the same time, I believe that the airline’s supply will also respond and adjust quickly, and airlines will increase their efforts to resume popular routes and add routes to emerging destinations after the epidemic until the supply and demand sides will not return to a balanced state again.” Xiang Min, head of Fliggy’s airline ticket business, said.
However, Guo Lechun, deputy director of the Qunar Big Data Research Institute, told reporters that the adjustment of entry and exit policies will help promote the orderly recovery of international flights, but limited by the approval of international flight agreements, the supply of flights will not increase significantly in the short term. At the moment, the number of flights planned is only 400 and even if all flights are made, it will be only 10% of that in 2019.
Furthermore, visas are still a major factor limiting travel and many passengers have expired passports and visa processing will take time. The reporter noted that a number of platforms overnight updated the status of visa-free countries and regions to make travel arrangements easier for passengers.
Guo Lechun believes that optimizing entry and exit policies has made passenger travel no longer restricted, but due to insufficient supply and short-term air ticket prices still high, it will take some time for the demand of total travel recover. It is expected that after the change of flight season at the end of March next year, the flight volume will recover significantly, and the airfare price will gradually return to a reasonable range. With the implementation of the policy and the restoration of the airline’s operational capacity, the summer of 2023 could usher in the peak of inbound and outbound tourism. (Worker’s Daily, Beijing, December 27)
(Yang Zhaokui)
[Redattore responsabile: Xu Dan]
