Chinese tourists name Russia on list of most desired destinations, but when will people in China actually be able to travel internationally again?
- Southeast Asia, Europe and Japan also on the list, part of a McKinsey survey that found Chinese desire for overseas travel has rebounded to pre-pandemic levels
- But outbound leisure tourism is the last priority of the Chinese government, the report adds, behind international business travel and domestic tourism
Asian, European, Klingon or Na’vi. It probably doesn’t matter much to many of those who rely on the tourism industry for a living, just so long as tourists of some description return – preferably bearing well-stuffed wallets.
And – after two long years of Covid-19 restrictions – tourists are returning, as destinations from Paris to Phuket prepare for a northern summer approaching something describable as “normal”.
However, among the major differences to 2019 will be the mix of international tourists, with two large groups set to be conspicuous by their absence: Russians and Chinese.
The former have found doors shut to them following their country’s invasion of Ukraine, one of the main hurdles being that Visa and Mastercard are refusing to deal with Russian customers.
“Countries like Cuba, Indonesia, Thailand […] have welcomed an ever-growing number of Russian tourists,” reports German broadcaster DW. “The Maldives, Seychelles and Sri Lanka have also attracted more and more guests from Russia.”
DW states that, before the pandemic, Russian tourists generated US$36 billion in worldwide revenue, quoting United Nations World Tourism Organization figures. Ukrainian travellers contributed another US$8.5 billion.
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According to another DW report, one destination that had come to rely heavily on Russians is hopeful of attracting large numbers of them despite sanctions and other restrictions.
“Turkey has a formula to allow Russian tourists to travel to Turkey,” claims DW, explaining that the visitors will be able to use Russia’s home-grown payments system, Mir.
“Russia created Mir (Russian for ‘peace’ or ‘world’) in 2014 over fears that Western sanctions against Russian banks and business people over the annexation of Crimea could block transactions made with Mastercard and Visa,” explains DW. “The Mir cards, used for bank transfers, are accepted throughout the Russian Federation and in 12 other countries. As of the end of 2021, the number of issued Mir cards totalled 113.6 million.”
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Although Vietnam is one of those 12 countries, its tourism authorities don’t seem to be as optimistic as those in Turkey. Areas such as Nha Trang – where some hotels had, following the March 15 reopening of Vietnam, set aside as many as 70 per cent of rooms for the once-reliable Russians – are giving up on seeing them this summer, according to Bloomberg.
Missed even more than Russians will be the Chinese, who outspent all others as they wandered the planet in 2019, forking out about US$254.6 billion, according to consumer data company Statista.
China is continuing to pursue a strict zero-Covid policy and no one is seriously expecting tourists from the country to be seen in any great numbers abroad this year. That does not mean they have been forgotten by the writers of tourist-sentiment reports, though.
Travel website Skift muses on “the curious case of the missing Chinese tourist […] in destinations across the world” while sifting through a recent report on trends in China’s tourism market by consulting firm McKinsey.
That curiousness is explained by the fact that many people in the mainland are unable to leave their apartment, let alone the country, but McKinsey’s survey, conducted as parts of Shanghai were going into strict lockdown, shows that a desire for overseas travel has rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, with Southeast Asia, Europe, Russia and Japan named as the overseas destinations most yearned for by the Chinese.
But that yearning will continue for a while yet, if McKinsey partner Steve Saxon knows his beans.
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“Saxon noted that even if travel returns, albeit gradually, outbound leisure tourism would be the last priority of the Chinese government,” reads the Skift article. “This is in sharp contrast to the rest of the world where the easing of travel restrictions results in the leisure traveller being the first to travel.
“At the moment, the government is not issuing passports. Also, many Chinese tourists travel internationally on tour groups, which needs government approval, said Saxon. ‘Once borders open, international business travel will be the first to take off, followed by visiting friends and relatives. Leisure travel will be the last to make a comeback’.”
Another recent study also found that the appetite to travel abroad was returning on the mainland. Between March 9 and 14 – when “global pandemic controls were being lifted significantly, but Chinese domestic outbreaks were on the rise” – Dragon Trail Research asked 1,011 mainland travellers about their preferences and behaviour.
“News reports in China showed the advent of war in Europe. Under these circumstances, it’s not surprising that more than half of survey respondents were not planning to travel.
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“Yet at the same time, sentiment around ‘eager to travel’ also grew significantly since Dragon Trail’s last traveller survey, in September 2021. Perceptions around the safety of international travel destinations also improved across the board – for each and every [territory] on the list”, including Singapore (which 45 per cent of respondents considered “safe”), Hong Kong (37 per cent), Thailand (23 per cent) and the United States (a pitiful 7 per cent).
“Quarantine-on-return remains the biggest obstacle to outbound tourism, and our spring 2022 survey reveals shifting attitudes towards this policy. Compared to September 2021, an increasing number of travellers would prefer quarantine to either be relaxed or stay the same, with fewer calling for stricter measures.” News reports suggest several cities – including Guangzhou and Shanghai – will soon follow Xiamen’s example, and lower the length of quarantine for arrivals from 14 days to 10.
Both reports give the impression that mainland Chinese travellers are once again inquisitive about other countries, but the world can wait a little longer. When they finally do venture forth again, will those travellers be rubbing shoulders with Russians? With Americans? With Indians?
Bearing in mind a recent Georgetown University study that warns that thousands of new and emerging viruses will jump from animals to humans in the coming years as the world warms, and that geopolitical stresses will only increase as the climate breaks down, it’s not a given that the touristic experience will ever again be as cosmopolitan as it was at the dawn of the 2020s. Anywhere.
Glass-bottomed bridge in Vietnam claims title of world’s longest
Is it or isn’t it?
The operators of Vietnam’s 632-metre (2070-foot) Bach Long crossing claim theirs is the world’s longest glass-bottomed bridge, the rightful heir to a title that has been hitherto held by a similar bridge outside Qingyuan, in Guangdong province, but which is only – ONLY! – 526 metres long.
As they await confirmation from the bods at Guinness World Records, Destinations Known is sure of one thing: we will never set foot on such a terrifying piece of infrastructure, especially after that poor man had to cling on for dear life when glass panels fell out from beneath his feet on a 100-metre-high bridge at Piyan Mountain, Jilin province, when it was hit by strong gusts in May 2021.
Nerve shattering!
