By Sophie Yu and Casey Hall
BEIJING (Reuters) – Guilherme Carvalho made his first visit to China this month, and the Italian said a major factor behind the trip was the post-pandemic policy of waiving entry permits for some tourists.
Previously, all foreign visitors had to go through the tedious process of obtaining a Chinese visa. Now, visitors from more than a dozen countries can simply fly in and stay for up to 15 days.
“I didn’t expect to feel so safe,” said Carvalho, who visited Shanghai. “Everyone is so nice.”
Carvalho is not alone in making this choice. As authorities focus on boosting foreign tourism to try to revive the economy and boost consumer spending, thousands of visitors have flocked to China, encouraged by visa policies and easier access to its unique digital payment services.
As of June 24, bookings from several countries subject to the visa policy, including France, Germany, Italy, Malaysia and Thailand, increased by 150 percent from a year earlier, according to data from Trip.com, China’s largest online travel agency.
Bookings for July and August are also expected to be higher.
“We are very happy to see this trend. Many people had misconceptions about China before coming, but after they arrive, they feel that cities like Shanghai are very safe and very clean,” said Jane Sun, CEO of Trip.com.
Since December, China has granted visa-free entry to tourists from several countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia, New Zealand and Poland.
Southeast Asian countries including Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia have also struck deals with Beijing to facilitate visa-free travel.
In the week that China announced visa-free travel for visitors from Australia and New Zealand, tour sales jumped 133 per cent from the previous week, said Yvette Thompson, general manager of sales and marketing for Australia and New Zealand at travel agency Intrepid Travel.
“Since the COVID crisis, visas have become just another layer of complexity for travelers, so I think it’s a good step to remove that complexity,” she said.
LONG TERM RECOVERY
The recent surge in tourism comes after China closed its borders in early 2020 to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, and kept them closed until early 2023.
But even with the visa-free policy, far fewer tourists are coming to China today than before the pandemic.
According to official tourism data, China received 49.1 million foreign visitors in 2019, more than a third of whom were for tourism and leisure purposes. International tourism revenue reached $131.3 billion that year.
In the first half of 2024, the number of foreign nationals entering China was much lower, at 14.6 million. Of these, 8.5 million entered without a visa, just over half of the total, according to the National Immigration Administration.
International tourism revenue data for China has not been released since 2019.
Travel agents say they hope more foreign tourists will arrive next year as global travel demand and flight schedules return to pre-pandemic levels.
However, China needs to do more than just scrap visas to encourage foreigners to come, experts say.
Geopolitical tensions, a government that tolerates no dissent and China’s sometimes belligerent image in some Western media have kept some tourists away. Two stabbing attacks on foreigners last month have also raised security concerns.
China must also compete for attention with Japan, which is experiencing a tourism boom thanks to its weak yen.
“The more we talk about the reasons to go to China – the diversity of landscapes, the history, the difference between the imperial city of Beijing and the futuristic city of Shanghai – the faster the negative effects of advertising dissipate,” said travel agent Thomson.
Another potential obstacle for foreigners is China’s vast digital infrastructure.
Payment for everything from transport tickets to restaurant reservations to tourist site admissions is done via QR codes linked to local payment apps such as WeChat and Alipay, making daily interactions difficult for foreign bank card holders.
China has allowed foreign bank cards to be connected to Alipay and WeChat, but the system and language barriers remain daunting.
“I can’t imagine how a foreigner who doesn’t have Chinese payment tools and doesn’t speak the language can manage all this,” said Liang Hongling, a Chinese academic living in Glasgow who plans to travel with her Irish husband to her hometown in Xinjiang this month.
(Reporting by Sophie Yu in Beijing and Casey Hall in Shanghai; Editing by Anne Marie Roantree and Miral Fahmy)
