China's inbound tourism heats up in summer travel surge

Passengers prepare to board a train bound for north China's Tianjin Municipality at the Beijing Daxing International Airport Station in Beijing, capital of China, July 6, 2024. (Xinhua/Li Ran)

BEIJING, Aug. 10 (Xinhua) -- Elena and her boyfriend planned for their trip to China three months in advance and when wandering last week in the Forbidden City, a must-see heritage site in Beijing, the tourists from Russia said the unique culture and architecture had made all their preparations "absolutely worthwhile."

It is their first trip to the Chinese mainland. "We both fell in love with China," Elena said. "We are looking forward to visiting other places, including Shanghai and Xi'an, during our two-week tour."

"China Travel" has caused a sensation on global social media. In the vlogs of many influencers, foreign visitors can be seen strolling through Chinese night markets to try specialties, dancing in squares alongside locals, taking self-driving taxis, experiencing high-speed trains and having food delivered by drones.

According to the National Immigration Administration, the country recorded about 14.64 million entries by foreigners in the first half of 2024, a year-on-year increase of 152.7 percent. Among these entries, more than 8.54 million were facilitated by visa-free policies.

The inbound travel surge was due in part to the increase in the number of countries enjoying China's visa-free policy.

China has added tourists from more countries to the visa-free entry list this year and currently implements a 72/144-hour visa-free transit policy for people from 54 countries.

"We will do more to encourage people-to-people exchanges, and give foreign tourists a better experience in China," Xie Feng, Chinese ambassador to the United States, said recently in an interview with Newsweek magazine.

The resolution adopted at the third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in July pledged to make it more convenient for people from overseas to live, receive medical services and make payments on the Chinese mainland.

The People's Bank of China, the Chinese central bank, has encouraged major mobile payment service providers such as Alipay and Tenpay to optimize work processes to facilitate the binding of credit cards and simplify personal identity authentication while protecting personal information. Additionally, the upper limit for the value of a single transaction and the annual cap for mobile payments have also been raised to 5,000 U.S. dollars and 50,000 U.S. dollars, respectively.

The Ministry of Commerce and six other government departments have issued a circular on further facilitating accommodation for overseas travelers in China, stressing no restrictions for hotels to receive foreign guests and calling for improving registration services and simplifying information collection.

Apart from inbound visitors, the number of domestic tourists has also shown steady growth this summer, driven by family travel, educational tours, summer retreats and graduation trips.

Even during the recent hottest days of the year, waves of educational tour groups thronged tourist attractions in the Chinese capital Beijing. Li Min from Shandong Province brought her two children here for a cultural tour. "I want to take advantage of the summer holiday to let them experience the traditional culture and broaden their horizons," she said.

Tourism veteran Qian Lan said this year's high season has been especially busy. "This summer, our long-distance travel orders went up 40 percent compared with last year, as tourists tend to travel in depth rather than skim the surface," said Qian, general manager of a travel agency in east China's Jiangxi Province.

China recorded 423 million railway passenger trips in July, the first half of the two-month summer travel rush, data from the China State Railway Group Co., Ltd. showed. This figure marked an increase of 4 percent from the same period in 2023.

Many regions have introduced measures to attract tourists, such as distributing vouchers and offering ticket discounts and spending rebates.

To embrace the summer tourism peak, the Xijiang Qianhu Miao Village, a popular ethnic tourist attraction in southwest China's Guizhou Province, introduced its first cableway, upgraded its tea culture street, added traditional dance and other indigenous performances, and arranged unique holiday events, such as the silver jewelry parade and rice cake-making competitions.

Given the booming summer tourism, China is planning even more measures to tap the potential of cultural and tourism consumption in bolstering economic growth and improving people's well-being.

Ma Li, an official of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, said Friday that efforts will be made to hold more tourism promotion activities, offer increased superior cultural performances and improve the tourism environment, so as to meet the diversified demands of tourists and boost urban and rural development.