During the Lunar New Year holiday, China's outbound tourism and inbound tourism ushered in a prosperous scene of "two-way travel".
According to the statistics of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, during the Spring Festival holiday in 2024, driven by favorable policies such as mutual visa exemption, customs clearance facilitation and the resumption of air routes, the recovery of inbound and outbound tourism will be accelerated. During the Spring Festival holiday, there were about 6.83 million inbound and outbound tourists, of which about 3.6 million were first-class border tours and 3.23 million inbound tourists.
Chinese and foreign tourists are accelerating into each other's daily life scenes. During the journey, people felt the culture, enhanced understanding, and strengthened people-to-people exchanges. Dai Bin, president of the China Tourism Academy, analyzed.
According to a report released by the China Tourism Academy a few days ago, with the strengthening of China's tourism market momentum and residents' willingness to travel abroad, the pace of international tourism recovery is expected to accelerate significantly, and the number of outbound tourists will reach 1 in 2024300 million people. At the same time, with the significant increase in potential inbound tourism demand and the further release of the policy effect of inbound tourism facilitation, inbound tourism will also recover steadily, promoting the prosperity and development of the world tourism economy.
Outbound travel consumption has recovered strongly, and payment scenarios are more frequent and diversified.
From the end of 2023 to the beginning of 2024, popular outbound travel destinations such as Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore have successively announced visa-free policies for Chinese tourists. With the continuous recovery of international capacity, the outbound travel market will be very hot during the Spring Festival holiday in 2024, and many popular destinations around the world have opened the "Spring Festival mode".
According to the "2024 Spring Festival Travel Report for the Year of the Dragon" released by Ctrip, during the Spring Festival, outbound Ctrip car orders increased by 53% compared with 2019, and ticket orders for overseas scenic spots increased by more than 130% compared with 2019. Among them, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and other "Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand" visa-free countries have seen a high growth in travel orders, with a total increase of more than 3% compared with 2019.
Alipay's outbound travel data shows that the number of overseas purchases by Alipay users during the Spring Festival has been 107% of the level of the same period in 2019, of which the consumption amount will increase by 140% year-on-year in 2023. With the strong recovery of outbound travel, it also shows that users' travel preferences are more diverse, and mobile payment scenarios are more common and diversified.
Among them, nearby destinations such as Hong Kong, Macao, Southeast Asia, Japan and South Korea are sought after, while long-distance destinations such as Europe, America, Australia, North America and the Middle East are also gradually picking up, indicating that the travel radius and choices of Chinese tourists are constantly expanding. Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, France, Australia and Canada are the top 10 destinations most popular by Alipay users in terms of spending amount.
Judging from the data performance of Alipay's outbound travel in Southeast Asia, compared with the Spring Festival in 2023, it has achieved a huge growth of nearly 580%. Among them, Thailand topped the list of spending amounts, while Malaysia also performed well, making it the country with the largest increase in consumption among the three countries.
The diversification of tourism consumption scenarios is also a major feature of outbound travel during the Spring Festival in the Year of the Dragon. In addition to traditional consumption hotspots such as shopping in business districts and duty-free shops, hotels and vacations, it has also expanded to "immersive" tourism experiences such as special tourism, local catering, local transportation and cultural and entertainment consumption. Compared with the 2019 Spring Festival, people's spending on local and specialty food and beverage has continued to rise, with the amount of food and beverage spending increasing by 70%, reflecting the pursuit of high-quality travel experiences by Chinese tourists.
At the same time, in recent years, Alipay has focused on expanding overseas short-distance transportation services, and currently supports a variety of overseas travel modes including taxis, car rentals, public transportation, electric scooters, and high-speed rail, which has led to a significant increase in overseas digital travel orders. In particular, the access to diversified bus services has reduced the cost of transportation by about 60% compared with 2019. The carbon footprint of Chinese travel has become lighter, and "sustainable travel" has also become a highlight of Alipay's outbound travel.
A mobile phone to travel in China The number of Chinese merchants doing business with overseas tourists increased by 56 times.
The continuous release of the visa-free policy, coupled with the recent introduction of a number of new entry facilitation measures, has also further promoted foreign tourists to travel to China, driving the inbound tourism market during the Spring Festival.
According to the data, inbound travel orders during the Spring Festival in 2024 will increase by more than 10 times year-on-year, and the main source countries are Japan, the United States, South Korea, Malaysia, Germany, Thailand, etc.
Up to now, China has concluded visa exemption agreements covering different passport types with more than 150 countries, agreements or arrangements with more than 40 countries on visa simplification, and full visa exemption with more than 20 countries, including the Maldives and Kazakhstan.
The Spring Festival is also becoming more and more "international", driving the acceleration of inbound tourism. Currently, more than 20 countries and regions have made the Chinese New Year an official holiday, and about one-fifth of the world's population celebrates the Lunar New Year in different forms.
This year, with the popularity of cross-border mobile payment services, more overseas tourists can experience the original Chinese New Year more smoothly. And more businesses, especially small and medium-sized businesses, can also start a "cross-national" tourist business with zero technical costs. Before the 2023 Hangzhou Asian Games, through Ant Group's AliPay+ innovative cross-border payment technology solution, users in 7 countries and regions, including South Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand, can use 10 e-wallets that are commonly used at home to scan QR codes to pay directly in China. Friends from other countries and regions can also bind a wild card through Alipay to realize "a mobile phone tour in China".
According to reports, in the Spring Festival of the Year of the Dragon, the amount of inbound consumption by overseas tourists using overseas e-wallets increased by nearly 32 times compared with last year's Spring Festival, and the amount of consumption using Alipay increased by 5 times, which helped the growth of tourism and retail industries in various places. The number of active merchants in China who started business with overseas tourists increased by 5% compared to the Spring Festival in 20236 times. Among them, the entry of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan residents, overseas Chinese returning to China to visit relatives and foreign tourists experience tourism have become the three main inbound consumption. Hong Kong, Malaysia, Macau, South Korea and Thailand were the main source destinations during the Spring Festival, while Guangdong, Shanghai, Fujian and Zhejiang were the regions that received the most inbound mobile payment users.
With the help of mobile payment, overseas tourists can experience the scenery and culture of China's big cities and towns in a deeper way, covering hot pot restaurants, bubble tea shops, places of interest and niche attractions. Especially in the Greater Bay Area, Hong Kong and Macao compatriots have truly realized a "cross-border digital life circle". Hong Kong and Macao tourists began to go north before the Spring Festival to buy New Year's goods, hair and nail art and other beauty consumption has also become a rigid demand this year. Before the Spring Festival, Hema, Sam, and Costco received waves of northbound passengers. In January this year, the average daily number and value of AlipayHK transactions by Hong Kong citizens in the mainland increased by 10 to 15 times compared with the reopening of the border in February last year. Scanning QR codes in the mainland has also become a skillful travel habit for Hong Kong citizens, accounting for one-third of the total number of transactions in the mainland in January. This year, in addition to the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta, the popular Northeast tour in China will also attract more overseas tourists to Harbin and Shenyang to experience the ice and snow world.
Zeng Gang, deputy director of the National Finance and Development Laboratory, said that from the perspective of Spring Festival business trends, cross-border mobile payment services are increasingly becoming the key to a smooth international travel experience, and also provide more direct channels for merchants and tourism departments of various countries to reach users and cross-border promotion.