BEIJING: Chinese tourists are expected to make more than 6 billion domestic trips in 2024, and the combined number of inbound and outbound tourists traveling internationally is expected to exceed 260 million, according to a recent report from the China Tourism Academy.
The report, which includes a review of China’s tourism performance in 2023 and a forecast for 2024, highlights significant recovery in the tourism sector last year.
In 2023, domestic tourism in China saw remarkable year-on-year growth of over 100 percent in both revenue and number of tourists, bouncing back to over 80 percent of the 2019 level, figures from the report show.
Inbound and outbound international tourism also surged, with the total number of tourists surpassing 190 million, up more than 280 percent from the previous year.
The academy’s research team said that the desire to travel among China’s residents remained high throughout 2023, with tourists reporting a high level of satisfaction.Meanwhile, The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region saw a steady recovery in incoming visitors in 2023 boosted by a resumption of normal travel between the city and the Chinese mainland, official data showed Thursday.
The total number of visitor arrivals was around 34 million in 2023, representing a rise of 55 times as compared with that of 2022, of which Chinese mainland visitor arrivals were around 26.76 million, the immigration department of the HKSAR government said.
A total of around 212 million passengers passed through Hong Kong’s control points, representing a rise of 39 times over 2022. In general, the total number of passengers passing through Hong Kong’s control points in 2023 recovered to 70 percent of that in 2019, the immigration department said.
To support the HKSAR government’s initiatives to attract talent from outside Hong Kong, the department has continued to enhance talent admission schemes, with the number of applications under various schemes increasing significantly last year.
The number of applications under all sorts of talent admission schemes surpassed 220,000, with around 135,000 of them approved, and about 90,000 people with approved visas have arrived in Hong Kong, the department said.
Earlier, Senior Communist Party of China official Chen Wenqing on Thursday urged police nationwide to fulfill their duty to safeguard security during the upcoming Spring Festival holiday, and their duty to maintain continuous social stability in Beijing and across the country.
Chen, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and head of the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the CPC Central Committee, made the remarks when inspecting primary-level work on legal affairs in Beijing.
Chen noted that legal affairs organs face the challenging task of safeguarding social security and stability. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
