Travellers walk with their luggage at Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing, China, Dec 27, 2022. (TINGSHU WANG / REUTERS)
Tourism in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area made a steady recovery over the New Year holidays, with more people willing to travel since the lifting of most of the COVID-19 curbs on the Chinese mainland last month.
Shenzhen saw tourists making a total of 1.23 million trips during the three-day holiday break from Dec 31 to Jan 2, with the tourism business raking in 822 million yuan ($119 million), according to official statistics.
Guangzhou – Guangdong’s provincial capital — generated more than two billion yuan in the cultural and tourism sectors over the same period, with 2.72 million local tourists and 1.3 million from other places.
Interprovincial and intercity tours accounted for nearly 80 percent of the total number of travelers — the highest number in nearly a year — according to Alibaba Group’s online travel platform Feizhu.
The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, which is gearing up for a full resumption of normal travel with the Chinese mainland on Jan 8, is also expected to see a tourism boom
Young travelers born in the 1990s and the post-millennial generation formed the majority of tourists, taking up more than 70 percent.
According to the platform, Sichuan, Chonqqing, Zhejiang, Shanghai and Yunnan were the most popular destinations for Guangdong tourists. Guangdong itself is the preferred place to visit for tourists from Beijing and Shanghai, as well as Zhejiang, Sichuan and Jiangsu provinces.
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According to an employee at Guangzhou’s Chimelong Tourist Resort, its ticket sales surged at least five-fold during the holidays, compared with a week earlier.
The recovery was partly fueled by various incentives from local governments to boost spending. Guangzhou’s cultural and tourism department said it would distribute 20 million yuan worth of consumption vouchers in three batches. The first batch of vouchers valued at 10 million yuan was rolled out on the first day of the holidays.
A total of 15,000 transactions using the consumption vouchers were made during the three-day period, with total value reaching 1.2 million yuan.
The Macao Special Administrative Region recorded almost 62,000 inbound trips at all its checkpoints during the New Year holidays. The city’s average daily number of more than 20,000 tourist arrivals during the holidays represented an increase of 64 percent over the period from Dec 1 to 29.
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The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, which is gearing up for a full resumption of normal travel with the Chinese mainland on Jan 8, is also expected to see a tourism boom.
“I’m not returning to my hometown this year, but plan to go to Hong Kong with my family,” said Chen Xin, a 40-year-old who works at a venture capital firm in Shenzhen.
“It has been three years since I last visited Hong Kong. I’m very eager to see whether there have been big changes there,” he said.