Beijing: The Chingming Festival, a traditional Chinese festival honoring dead ancestors and worshiping them, has boosted the number of Chinese tourists to visa-friendly destinations from Southeast Asia to Africa due to favorable immigration policies. Chinese tourists are starting to come out in style.
The new regulations have made it easier for Chinese visitors to travel abroad and exchange more. Experts believe that the ongoing Chinese tourism trend may represent a favorable prospect for local and global tourism.
With the panda mascot hanging from the team flag, tourist Wang Xiaomei took a tour group of more than 20 people from Chengdu, the capital of China’s Sichuan Province, to Pattaya, one of Thailand’s most visited beach resorts.
Wang, from China’s Sichuan Youth Travel Agency, has been in the industry for 15 years. He hasn’t had a day off since March and is at full strength every day.
“The number of tourists has increased since March. We used to organize two six-day trips to Thailand every month from Chengdu. Now we have five trips this month, and each of our tourists has a busy schedule,” Wang Xinhua reported.
Different dialects of Chinese can be heard near Singapore’s iconic Merlion during the three-day Chinese national holiday. Visa-free travel to Singapore also led to queues outside Universal Studios and many parks.
Data from the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) shows that air passenger services between China and Singapore have reached pre-COVID-19 levels. Flight tickets booked between mainland China and Singapore for the yingming festival rose 50 percent year-on-year in 2019, with fares up 15 percent.
EU holiday director Fiona Ma expects China to become the most popular short-term family travel destination for Chinese on May Day, another Chinese national holiday. We will be adding some museum tours and the new Sentosa Sensoryscape attraction to our package,” he said.
Even Tanzania, where a direct flight from mainland China is 12 hours away, has seen an increase in the number of Chinese tourists, Pan Lei of Moda Tourism, the first Chinese travel company in Tanzania, reported to Xinhua.
“Tanzania is home to one of the richest wildlife resources in the world and the Great Migration in the Serengeti plains. It also has the highest mountain in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro, and Zanzibar, coral reefs in the Indian Ocean,” he said.
When China and Singapore introduced 30-day visa-free travel on February 9, mainland China was Singapore’s main source of visitors, with about 327,000 tourists, according to STB data.
“The mutual visa waiver between China and Singapore is good news for the tourism industry,” said Minister of Trade and Industry of Singapore Alwin Tan.
“The visa waiver has also been brought in business travelers more often. Our check-in service has increased by more than 50 percent,” said Ma from the EU holiday.
There are currently 23 countries with a comprehensive visa waiver agreement with China, and visa-free stays for ordinary Chinese passport holders are usually 30 days.
“The experience of traveling in Thailand this time is very good. We feel the hospitality and friendliness of the Thai people, and we also feel the convenience of relaxation,” said Chan Bingbing from China’s Guangdong Province, a self-traveler. Thailand with six friends.
When he arrived, he said he saved more than 2,000 baht (US$55) in visa fees and that the entry process went very smoothly.
According to Thailand’s Ministry of Tourism and Sports, Thailand receives 1.75 million tourists from China, the largest source of tourists to Southeast Asian countries.
