© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Passengers wearing face masks in the wake of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak sit on a sightseeing bus during a night tour, ahead of the Golden Week holiday of Chinese National Day in Beijing, China September 26, 2022. REUTERS/Florence Lu/
By Chayut Setboonsarng
BANGKOK (Reuters) – Outbound travel bookings from mainland China are currently at just over half of pre-pandemic levels but are on track to return to 2019 numbers by the end of this year or early 2024, the head of online travel agency Agoda said on Thursday. .
China was the world’s largest outbound tourism market before the pandemic, with annual spending of $255 billion. The country reopened earlier this year after removing most pandemic restrictions, giving overseas travel a huge boost.
“China’s recovery is accelerating, just above the halfway point compared to 2019 levels,” Umri Morgenstern told reporters on Thursday, adding that 2019 figures were “still a bit far” from 2019 numbers for the first five months.
“They will close the gap by the end of the year or early next year,” he said.
One of the main beneficiaries of the reopening has been Thailand, and it is one of the most popular travel destinations in Asia. Agoda data showed that the top overseas destinations for Chinese tourists were Hong Kong, Bangkok and the Thai island of Phuket.
The Bangkok-based company is a unit of online travel giant, Booking Holdings (NASDAQ:).
Tourism is a primary driver of Thailand’s economy and it accounted for 12% of the economy before the pandemic. In 2019, the country recorded nearly 40 million foreign tourists who spent 1.91 trillion baht ($54.89 billion).
Of that, China was the largest source market with 11 million tourists arriving.
About 80% of Chinese tourists have returned to Thailand, Morgenstern said, attributing the faster recovery rate to Thailand removing restrictions on Chinese arrivals sooner than other markets.
Thailand expects about 30 million tourists for the whole year with five million coming from China.
Overall bookings to Thailand have fully recovered, Morgenstern said, but there is potential for growth especially with tourists from India and South Korea by reducing access restrictions and increasing airline capacity.
So far this year, Thailand has welcomed 11.4 million foreign expats, who have spent 472 billion baht.
($1 = 34.8000 baht)