BEIJING: China’s tourism market will return to normal and embrace high-quality development this year, a matter of importance to the recovery of global tourism, experts and tourism insiders said.
Zurab Pololikashvili, secretary-general of the World Tourism Organization, said at the recently concluded Xianghu Dialogue — a tourism-focused forum held by the World Tourism Alliance on Friday and Saturday, that China’s tourism is recovering to pre-COVID levels faster than predicted, and will show good results this month.
He said that 2023 is a significant year in China, and that global and Chinese efforts to restore the inbound and outbound tourism market have positively influenced global tourism.
Chinese tourism industry operators are demonstrating a bullish outlook toward the domestic and inbound and outbound markets since the country revised COVID-19 control policies in January.
The China Tourism Academy presented an encouraging forecast that the number of domestic tourism visits will recover to 85 percent of that in 2019, and tourism-related consumption to 75 percent of its pre-pandemic levels this year. Inbound and outbound visits are projected to reach 40 percent of 2019 levels, a figure of 300 million.
“We are confident in taking a positive view of the national tourism economy this year given improved policies, greater willingness to travel and the increasing confidence of tourism operators in the sector’s development,” said Dai Bin, the academy’s president.
–The Daily Mail-China Daily Mail news exchange
