By Jamie Freed

(Reuters) – Asia’s gradual lifting of travel restrictions is proving to be a relief for hard-hit operators in tourism. The region slowly opens up to tourists from all over the globe, with one exception.

China is the former world’s biggest outbound tourist market. The country has kept international air capacity below 2% since pre-pandemic and does not intend to loosen travel restrictions.

Operators such as Thailand’s Laguna Phuket have to fill the $255 billion gap in global tourism revenue.

Ravi Chandran (Managing Director) says Laguna Phuket has shifted its marketing focus away from China to offset the decline in Chinese visitors. Chinese accounts for between 25%-30% and 25%-30%, respectively, of the resorts’ pre-COVID sales.

Chandran stated that “up to now, we haven’t done significant marketing and promotion in China…because we don’t believe anything is coming our way.” Based on data from Thailand’s tourism ministry, the cost of this pandemic to Thailand has been $50 billion per year. The Chinese are also higher spenders than Thailand. Thailand expects to attract 180,000 foreign tourists in 2019 – a fraction of its 40 million visitors last year. It opened more places than Phuket on Monday.

Many analysts expect China to continue its stringent policies, including a quarantine of up to three weeks for anyone returning from China until at most the second quarter. It may then allow people to return home gradually and on a country-by–country basis.

Pacific Asia Travel Association’s Chief Executive Liz Ortiguera stated that destinations must identify new markets and market to other cultures. She cited the Maldives, which was a unique example of pivotal success during the pandemic.

Indian Ocean’s string of islands was heavily promoted at trade shows, and more Indian tourists visited its luxurious resorts.

China was the largest source of tourist before the outbreak, but overall visitor numbers to the Maldives in the first nine month of 2021 fell by just 12% when compared with the same period in 2019.

According to a spokesperson of COMO Hotels and Resorts (which has two Maldives resorts), “When we realized that Chinese travellers were not coming to the Maldives soon,”

CHINA TOURISM EVOLVES

ForwardKeys, an international travel data provider estimates that Chinese outbound travel will not return to the pre-pandemic level until 2025. This will force airlines to reconsider their routes as 38% of Chinese tourists used foreign carriers in 2019, according to ForwardKeys data. Despite the opening of Bali, Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore to international tourists, Garuda Indonesia and Thai Airways are reducing their aircraft fleets in response to the lack of Chinese tourists.

Industry surveys reveal that many people are hesitant to travel abroad when China opens its borders. This is due to COVID-19 fear.

A boom has been seen in domestic holiday to Hainan Island, which offers duty-free shopping as a threat for future trips to South Korea and Hong Kong.

Kat Qi (29), a Beijing researcher who had traveled to Britain and Southeast Asia before the pandemic, stated that “I don’t have much interest in international travel.” “A lot more places that I would like to travel are in lesser developed countries, with beautiful scenery. And they also have the lowest vaccination rates.”

Surveys of Chinese tourists show that she prefers natural scenery. Experts say that many are focusing on outdoor activities at a time where domestic camping holidays are becoming more popular. Tourism operators will have to adjust accordingly.

Wolfgang Georg Arlt (CEO of China Outbound Tourism Research Institute) stated that “the market will have evolved so the Chinese people traveling in 2022 won’t be the same as the Chinese who travel in 2019”. This shopping and rushing will not be the new trends, according to me.

Large groups that are no longer popular for domestic travel could also go away, according to Sienna ParulisCook, the director of marketing at Dragon Trail International.

You might be able to organize travel, but this would only happen with people you are close to and not 50 strangers traveling on tour buses.

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