Passengers at Urumqi Diwopu International Airport in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, line up at flight check-in counters, on June 20, 2023. Photo: VCG

A Thai massage, a sip of coffee at a quiet bookstore, a visit to the modern gallery... Tang Yue, a Beijing-based white-collar worker, is seizing the last moment he spends in Bangkok, capital of Thailand, a city where he has made six leisure trips, as his three-day Dragon Boat Festival holidays draws to a close. 

"The online e-visa is convenient to apply for, and Bangkok is a suitable place for me to spend the short holidays because of its internalization, friendliness and safety," Tang told the Global Times.

Tang's overseas travel is just one example of China's outbound tourism market which is recovering as the country eased travel restrictions earlier this year and resumed groups tours to more than 60 countries.

During the just-concluded Dragon Boat Festival break, there were a total of 3.963 million inbound and outbound travelers, averaging 1.321 million border crossings per day, an increase of 2.3 times from last year's level, and accounting for 64.6 percent of the same period in 2019, the National Immigration Administration said.

Alibaba's travel branch Fliggy.com revealed that outbound travels have revived steadily as reflected by the rising border crossings during the Dragon Boat Festival holidays when flight orders jumped 4.1 times from the three-day New Year's Day holidays, and hotel bookings increased 3.4 times. 

Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore emerged as the most popular overseas destinations, according to Fliggy.

Separately, a report by domestic online travel agency Trip.com showed that China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region was the most popular travel destination for mainland tourists during the three-day festival thanks to the city's obvious advantages in terms of food, fashion, shopping.

Hotel orders from mainland tourists to Hong Kong jumped by 18-fold year-on-year, and orders for high-speed railway tickets to the city on Trip.com rose by more than 60 percent from the same period last month.

'Stumbling blocks'

China has witnessed a growing momentum in outbound tourism although there are still some "stumbling blocks" on the road to recovery.

Insufficient airline capacity and global geopolitical tensions are two major factors that are holding back Chinese travelers, industry insiders and experts said.

A veteran tourism industry insider, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Global Times on Sunday that international flight capacity is still lagging behind the 2019 level, driving up prices.

Most of the increase in overseas flights focused on the Asia-Pacific region, while flights between China and Europe have remained stagnant due to the geopolitical tensions there.

"Booking orders are indeed picking up, but the supply chain side is not catching up quickly. It still needs months [to fully recover]," he said.

Global flight capacity increased by a million seats, reaching 112.4 million last week, an increase of 14.1 percent compared with the same week in 2022 but still 3.6 percent below where it was in the same week in 2019, according to data from global travel data provider OAG.

The increasingly uncertain international situation is negatively affecting the decision-making of Chinese travelers who have the intention to go abroad, the insider added. "Some of our customers are taking a wait-and-see approach." 

"The outbound tourism sector is a market-driven one, and many service products need to be prepared in advance," Jiang Yiyi, a professor of leisure sports and tourism at the Beijing Sport University, told the Global Times on Sunday.

She used cruise tours as an example. When demand is scaled down as affected by international tensions, travel agencies will cut their bookings accordingly. China's outbound group travels, which accounted for half of the total outbound tourism before the pandemic, have gradually recovered but are still limited to selected countries.

Due to those constraint factors, Chinese travelers are opting more for domestic trips to unleash their pent-up desire for travel during the pandemic, and that's why the domestic travel market has boomed, reflected by the May Day holidays and Dragon Boat Festival holidays.

Summer travel peak

China saw a total of 106 million domestic tourist trips made during the Dragon Boat Festival, up 32.3 percent from the same period in 2022, or 112.8 percent of the same period in 2019. Tourism revenue reached 37.31 billion yuan ($5.3 billion) during the holidays, up 44.5 percent year-on-year, or making up 94.9 percent of 2019 levels, according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

Inspired by the travel peak season in summer and the week-long National Day holidays in October, China, the largest outbound travel market in the world both in the number of trips and total expenditure, is expected to witness a strong recovery momentum in outbound tourism in the second half of the year, Jiang said.

Despite the factors limiting outbound tourism, a sustained recovery is predicted, and the returning wave of Chinese travelers may gather momentum soon, an analysis report by McKinsey forecast.

Chinese tourists have maintained a strong desire to travel internationally and are willing to pay for the experience. They are also discerning and look for high-quality accommodation, offerings and service, the report said.

More big-spending Chinese travelers will head overseas this summer, according to a report by MasterCard. 

Compared with the period between January 2019 and March 2020, the average travel duration has increased from nine to current 11 days, and the per-capita budget for outbound tourists has grown from 34,300 yuan to 39,800 yuan now, up 16 percent, the MasterCard report found.