With China closed to international tourists, travel businesses that serve them have adapted to survive - and even thrive
- When the coronavirus epidemic emerged in China, the country locked down and international tourism dried up
- When internal travel revived, bespoke travel firms changed their itineraries to suit expats still in the country and Chinese tourists thirsting for adventure
The emergence of Covid-19 in early 2020 brought an abrupt end to a decade of sustained growth for the Bespoke Travel Company, a Beijing-based business offering custom-designed trips with expert guides.
“The team was the biggest it had ever been; we were making the most revenue we’d ever made,” says its British founder, Sarah Keenlyside. “It was on course to be a great year.”
But as news of the virus spread and China went into lockdown, she had to put her business into survival mode.
“We lost three staff and quickly moved to downsize our office. All excess spending was curtailed and we had to confront the fact that China [as a destination] might be a problem moving forward,” she says.
A similar existential shock was faced by Miller Xu Yu, of Shanghai-based M2adventure, which has built a solid reputation for adventure travel among the city’s expats since its inception, in 2014.
“The government decided to lock down in the Spring Festival and that’s when millions of people were travelling, including some of our groups. We were told, you need to bring them back immediately or else there is no coming back,” Xu says. “In a matter of hours we had to make very hard decisions. If we missed a time slot, a client could be stuck in a village somewhere for god knows how long.”