Issue #126 - Chinese New Year Brings Bold Tourism Forecasts Across Asia Pacific!
Issue #126 - Chinese New Year Brings Bold Tourism Forecasts Across Asia Pacific!
Big statistics dominate the regional discourse about Chinese travel.
Welcome to issue 126 of Asia Travel Re:Set.
If there were ever any doubt that tourism in Asia Pacific is a competitive numbers game, the upcoming Chinese New Year holiday provides conclusive clarity.
Governments, tourism boards and media across the region are engaged in frenzied speculation about an upsurge in Chinese traffic.
Annual forecasts are bolder than in 2023, but (except in China itself) do not meet the desired goal of matching 2019.
So let’s follow that train of thought…
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- “IN THE NEWS”
- Chinese New Year Brings Bold Tourism Forecasts Across Asia Pacific!
13 months on from China’s reopening, expectations are escalating.
- The Outlook for Travel & Tourism in Vietnam
In conversation with Mike Tatarski, Founder of Vietnam Weekly.
“IN THE NEWS”
I enjoyed presenting about the learnings from China’s outbound reboot in 2023, and the challenges ahead for South East Asian destinations, at the ASEAN Tourism Conference in Vientiane, Laos. The speech covered a lot of ground, from air capacity growth to Chinese domestic branding trends and high-speed rail travel as a ‘trip experience’ to innovations in the Night Economy.
"This year will bring more flights and more Chinese tourists into South-east Asia, and new patterns of travel and new expectations from tourists, but there needs to be a degree of organic regrowth." Hopes are high in Thailand and across ASEAN that the Lunar New Year holiday will hyper-charge China’s outbound tourism. Thanks to Ruoxue Goh for including my comments in this piece for The Business Times.
Chinese New Year Brings Bold Tourism Forecasts Across Asia Pacific!
The chunyun great migration - or “world's busiest travel season” - is underway.
Friday marked the start of the 40-day Lunar New Year travel period. The forecast statistics are, of course, enormous - and this year they carry even greater import.
Nine billion travel trips are anticipated, 80% of which will be by car. China’s railways are expected to transport 480 million passengers - or 12 million per day. That’s an increase of 38% compared to CNY 2023.
The scale of China’s air travel market will continue to expand. In 2023, 38 Chinese airports had a passenger throughput of 10 million or more. In 2024, 630 million domestic air passengers are forecast, up 7.7% from 2019.
Regional Expectations Are Rising
So what about the outbound market, especially given that 18.43 million Chinese passports were issued in 2023?
Without a doubt, the 2023 full-year total of 424 million cross-border trips in China, Hong Kong and Macau will be comfortably surpassed in 2024.
Media across the region are fuelling excitement that this year will see significant growth in outbound travel after a subdued first year of post-pandemic activity.
Chinese airlines have “added more than 2,500 international flights for the Spring Festival” period, from 26 January-5 March. What happens after the CNY upswing is a subject of conjecture.
Last week, China’s international air capacity was at 66% of the January 2019 level - ie, one-third of the market is still missing. This is a major uplift from around 12% in January 2023. China’s aviation regulator predicts it will reach 80% by year end - with one-fifth of the market still to return in 2025.
In turn, forecasts are tempered. Oxford Economics foresees “the number of outbound trips by Chinese travellers in 2024 will roughly double relative to 2023 [but] remain 22% below 2019 volumes”. It expects “a full recovery to pre-pandemic levels in 2025”.
Regional Round-Up
Mixed messages from Thailand - the most visited country by Chinese nationals in 2019. The official target of 8 million Chinese arrivals in 2024 would be more than double the 3.5 million in 2023, but some way short of 2019’s 11 million. Extra industry support is needed to meet this goal, says the Association of Thai Travel Agents, which prefers a “baseline projection” of 6 million Chinese visitors.
On Friday, Thailand and China signed a bilateral visa waiver (which starts on 1 March). One day earlier, Singapore and China announced a 30-day visa-free travel agreement. It starts on 9 February, Lunar New Year’s Eve. In 2023, Singapore greeted 37% of the 3.5 million Chinese visitors in 2019. No official 2024 forecast as yet.
FYI, local media reports that China now has “mutual visa exemptions with 22 countries, including Singapore, Maldives and Kazakhstan.”
Indonesia is targeting 1-1.5 million tourist arrivals from China in 2024. “Last year, we targeted 361,000 Chinese tourists, and achieved 707,000. This year, we increased the target,” said the nation’s Regional Director of Tourism Marketing.
Malaysia, which this week announced Johor as host of the 2025 ASEAN Tourism Forum, appears to be sticking - for now - with its 2024 goal of “approximately 5 million Chinese tourists.” That target was issued in early December 2023, shortly after Malaysia introduced 15-day visa free access for Chinese tourists.
Macau, meanwhile, has set a 2024 visitor target of 33 million visitors, up 17% from 2023 but also well short of 2019’s 39.4 million, This cautious forecast echoes that of Macau’s airport operator, which targets a 10-14% yearly rise in passenger volume.
Hong Kong Poly U’s new Greater Bay Area tourism forecasting service predicts Hong Kong will receive 54 million visitors in 2024, and “recover to the 2018* level of 65 million in 2025”. In 2018, Mainland China provided 51 million visitors to Hong Kong.
100%. Or Almost.
So, to finish, here is my favourite hedged China-driven forecast for 2024 by Steven Yiu, Executive Director of the Hong Kong Airport Authority, as quoted by SCMP:
“We have confidence that passenger traffic will return to 100% by the end of this year, or close to 100%.”
[* NB: 2018 is used as a base year for Hong Kong because of the prolonged street protests during 2019, which impacted visitor arrivals.]
The Outlook for Travel & Tourism in Vietnam
Vietnam is among the world’s most watched growth markets. Yet, with a population of more than 100 million, it seems unusual that the aviation regulator expects an 8% decrease in domestic air travel in 2024. Meanwhile, inbound arrivals are increasing and affluent Vietnamese are jetting off in big numbers.
To assess the outlook in 2024, The South East Asia Travel Show welcomes Ho Chi Minh City-based Michael Tatarski, founder of Vietnam Weekly. We recap the 2023 recovery for inbound, outbound and domestic travel. Plus, we discuss the emerging air market challenges, over-development in Phu Quoc, tourism waste management in Halong Bay... and the much-hyped North-South high-speed railway.
Listen to The Outlook for Travel & Tourism in Vietnam, with Mike Tatarski, Vietnam Weekly, here:
🎧 Spotify 🎧 Apple Podcasts 🎧 Website
Or search for The South East Asia Travel Show on any podcast platform
And, that’s a wrap for Issue 126.
The Asia Travel Re:Set newsletter will return on 11 February.
Until then, find me at LinkedIn, The South East Asia Travel Show and re:set strategies.
Happy travels,
Gary