China Sees Booking Rush as COVID-19 Restrictions Ease
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China Sees Booking Rush as COVID-19 Restrictions Ease

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Antonio Gozain By Antonio Gozain | Senior Journalist and Industry Analyst - Tue, 12/27/2022 - 15:30

Chinese people, isolated from the rest of the world for almost three years by stringent COVID-19 rules, flocked to travel sites on Tuesday after the National Health Commission (NHC) said it will stop requiring inbound travelers to go into quarantine starting Jan. 8, 2023.

Zero-COVID-19 measures, in place in China since early 2020, which included shuttered borders and frequent lockdowns, have battered the US$17-trillion economy, the world's second-largest. During the past month, stringent COVID-19 rules fueled the Chinese mainland’s biggest show of public discontent since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012, reported Reuters.

With official figures showing only one COVID-19 death in the last seven days in China, health experts doubt the government’s data and claim the statistics are “inconsistent” with the experience of much less populous countries after re-opening their borders. Doctors say hospitals are overwhelmed with five-to-six-times more patients than usual, most of them elderly. 

International health experts estimate millions of daily infections and predict at least 1million COVID-19 deaths in China next year, reported Reuters. Nevertheless, Chinese authorities will dismantle the last vestiges of their zero-COVID-19 policies.

Although currently there are no official restrictions on Chinese people going abroad, the new rule will make it much easier for them to return home. Within half an hour after the news, searches for popular cross-border destinations increased tenfold, travel platform Ctrip’s data showed. Meanwhile, data from Trip.com showed outbound flights bookings were up 254 percent early this Tuesday compared with the day before.

China's National Immigration Administration will resume processing passport applications of Chinese nationals seeking to travel abroad and approving visits of mainland residents to Hong Kong. The country will also resume the implementation of a policy allowing visa-free transit of up to 144 hours for travelers.

Tourism has increasingly become one of the main global economic activities. In 2019, travel and tourism contributed US$9.63 trillion to the world’s GDP, about 11 percent of the total GDP. Despite the pandemic, tourism in Mexico represented 7.5 percent of the total GDP in 2021. Over the past two decades, China has provided more tourists than any other country in the world. The World Bank estimates that by 2000, China provided about 10.5 million tourists. The figure hit 50 million in 2009 and 135 million by 2016.

Mexico is one of the countries that receive the most tourists every year. In 2021, Mexico was visited by 32 million international tourists. Meanwhile, in 2022 SECTUR estimates that the figure rose to 40 million. The return of Chinese people to tourism in 2023 represents an opportunity for Mexico, despite not being the main destination for Chinese. In pre-pandemic figures, from the 39 million tourists that visited Mexico, only 410,000 came from Eastern Asia, less than 1 percent of the total visitors. 

China is the Asian country that sends the most tourists to Mexico, said Miguel Torruco, Minister of Tourism, earlier in 2022. “We are committed to work hand in hand with China to promote tourism in Mexico,” said Torruco, adding that the goal within the next five years is to receive 200,000 Chinese tourists yearly.

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