Airlines are preparing to cater for an increase in Chinese tourists to Australia after China’s government announced group tours to the country could resume, as the relationship between Beijing and Canberra continues to thaw.
China’s culture and tourism ministry named Australia, as well as countries including Japan, South Korea, Britain and the US, in an updated list of destinations that Chinese tourism agencies can run group tours to for the first time since outbound travel was halted due to the pandemic.
Thursday’s announcement is the third such list, and followed approvals in January and March this year. The first batch included 20 countries such as Thailand, Russia, Cuba and Argentina, while the second included 40 countries, among them Nepal, France, Portugal, Brazil.
Guardian Australia understands that Chinese airlines flying into Australia had expected the announcement, and had recently begun preemptively building in extra capacity to the country.
Airports are also expecting airlines to look at introducing additional flights between mainland China and Australia as a result of the announcement.
Group tours are a popular travel choice for Chinese citizens. An industry source said group tours accounted for 30% of the Chinese leisure travel market to Australia before the pandemic.
Tourism & Transport Forum Australia CEO, Margy Osmond, said the resumption was “incredibly exciting” and would help the sector recover.
Osmond said the lack of tour groups from China had been “a major barrier”.
“The drop in Chinese visitor numbers has had a significant impact on our industry, given China was our largest source market for international tourism before the pandemic,” Osmond said.
Travel from China to Australia has significantly increased throughout 2023. At the beginning of the year, there were just three or four return flights between the mainland and Sydney airport each week. By August, there were more than 50 return flights a week – sustained in part by demand from the return of international students.
However, travel in June from China to Sydney Airport was at 69% of pre-pandemic levels.
Beijing’s announcement is the latest thawing of relations with Canberra, after it last week dropped its tariff of Australian barley imports that had been in place for three years.
Thursday’s news cheered China’s outbound travel operators, which have struggled since 2020 with more than three years of pandemic-induced border closures before China finally dropped Covid-19 restrictions late last year.
“It’s a milestone for the full resumption of the outbound travel, and will also strongly push the resumption of international flights, especially for Japan, Korea, the US,” said Zhou Weihong, deputy general manager at Spring Tour.
In the first quarter, Chinese tourism agencies recorded 318,600 outbound trips, with Thailand, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore among the top destinations. Though outbound travel only accounted for 1.58% of the overall tourism market in terms of the number of people who travelled, official figures showed.
Shares in South Korean firms with large exposure to Chinese travel demand – including two casino operators – jumped on the news.
With Reuters
