According to Trip.com, rates start at $83 per night at the Cliff Hotel (pictured) in China’s Guizhou province. The hotel is scheduled to open in 2023 and will have 34 rooms.
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
BEIJING — Chinese travelers are increasingly opting for cheaper domestic destinations over international destinations.
A survey published this month by consulting firm Oliver Wyman found that just 14% of high-income households who traveled abroad last year plan to do so again in 2024. This group includes mainland Chinese households earning more than 30,000 yuan ($4,140) a month, or about $50,000 a year.
According to the survey, the top reason for preferring one’s home country is “the wide range of domestic travel options,” followed by “international travel being too expensive.”
According to Oliver Wyman, the average cost per person for a trip within mainland China is less than 1,000 yuan, while a trip to Hong Kong or Japan can cost several thousand yuan.
Local tourism has been a bright spot in China’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, which ended in late 2022. Travel booking sites Trip.com The company said bookings to China’s regional tourist destinations will increase 2.6 times in 2023 compared to pre-pandemic levels.
Domestic tourism travel and revenues surged over this year’s May 1-5 holiday period, surpassing pre-pandemic levels in 2019, according to official data. International travel was slightly below 2019 levels, according to a CNBC analysis of official data.
In mainland China, smaller cities such as Yangzhou, Luoyang, Qinhuangdao, Guilin and Zibo saw the fastest growth in tourism bookings over the May holidays, according to Oliver Wyman.
“Domestic tourism will surpass pre-pandemic levels this year,” said Ashley Dudarenok, founder of Chinese digital consultancy Chosun.
She expects Chinese international travel to take time to recover, in part because “the sense that the rest of the world is crazy and dangerous is even greater than it was in 2023.”
In contrast, record numbers of Americans have applied for passports to travel internationally over the past two years, and a Skyscanner report found that 85% of U.S. travelers plan to travel at least as much internationally this year as they do in 2023, if not more.
U.S. and Chinese officials held a summit in Xi’an last week to promote tourism between the two countries.
The moment your site goes viral, thousands of tourists will come to you.
Ashley Dudarenok
Founder Chozan
It remains to be seen how long China’s tourist interest in developing regions will last, and whether it will translate into sustainable growth, but the short-term impact on some regions is significant.
The southern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, home to Guilin’s famous limestone hills, has announced plans to stimulate spending this year through increased advertising and tourism subsidies.
The region’s tourism revenue reached 258.18 billion yuan in the first quarter, up about 24 percent from the same period last year, according to officials. Local authorities said local government subsidies for the performing arts had generated 48.3 million yuan in ticket sales to 230,000 spectators, stimulating economic activity of about 460 million yuan.
A two-and-a-half-hour flight east of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region takes you to the Nanjing City Wall tourist site, which attracted nearly 1.3 million tourists in the first quarter, generating revenue of 19.2 million yuan, double the figure in 2019, according to local media.
Competition for media attention
Local governments outside China’s biggest cities are stepping up efforts to attract tourists, primarily through social media.
Authorities in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region said earlier this month that promotional videos on ByteDance’s apps such as “Douyin” and “Xiaohongshu,” known in English as “Little Red Book” or “Red,” had attracted millions of viewers.
“They’re trying to go viral, get the local community involved, get the cultural heritage involved, and put everything online,” Dudarenok said. “The minute it goes viral, thousands of tourists are going to come to you.”
In Zibo city in eastern China’s Shandong province, people flocked to the city last year after its skewer-roasting culture became popular on social media, while in Harbin, ice sculptures and other northern customs became popular on social media, drawing 3 million tourists to the city over a three-day New Year’s Eve holiday.
Television programs featuring specific regions also help promote tourism.
According to iQiyi, which distributed the miniseries, TV dramas set in Altai helped drive a roughly 38 percent increase in visitor numbers to the remote region of Xinjiang, China’s far western region, during the first three days of the May holiday this year compared with last year.
“Television shows are a big draw,” Dudarenouk said, adding that “food is the main reason Chinese tourists travel.”
China’s extensive network of high-speed rail and air routes makes it easy to visit smaller towns, even if only for a few days.
Domestic flight reservations Trip.com The company said last week that travel demand in the first quarter grew 30% year-on-year, noting that Chinese consumers are now placing more emphasis on “emotional fulfillment” and are showing increased interest in personalized travel.
“Our strengthened marketing efforts in many provinces have helped encourage travelers to explore more diverse destinations,” Trip.com executives said on an earnings conference call, according to a FactSet transcript.
Companies and local governments are working together in other ways to boost attention, if not revenue.
Officials from tourist destinations and local governments have been in touch to promote the Miss Tourism Asia pageant, said Yang Hua, chairman of the pageant’s organising committee.
“Currently, China’s domestic tourism industry is relatively fragmented,” Yang said in Chinese, as translated by CNBC. Over the next few years, he wants to organize destination-specific events in each city that can attract tourists.
Miss Tourism Asia shot contestants’ fashion promotional videos in the desert around the city of Aral in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region last year and will hold the final in Dongguan, a city in southern Guangzhou province, on Jan. 1, 2024.
Oliver Wyman said that with Chinese consumers now preferring domestic travel, international travel is unlikely to fully recover to 2019 levels until the second half of 2025, six months later than previously predicted.
In the longer term, Dudarenouk predicts that international destinations will also need to upgrade their experiences to match the rise of stylish, modern hotels and other travel services in China.
“Chinese tourists [are] It’s not that easy to be satisfied,” she said.
—CNBC’s Greg Iacurci and Yulia Jiang contributed to this report.
