LIKE the Philippines, other Asian countries are also seeing a slow revival in their Chinese visitor arrivals, contrasting with earlier projections of a sharp tourist boom.
In an email to the BusinessMirror, ForwardKeys Vice President Insights Olivier Ponti said, “The Chinese outbound travel market has been amongst the slowest in the world to recover. Looking at flight bookings this summer [June 1– August 31], outbound bookings from China were 53-percent behind pre-pandemic (2019) levels, whereas the global average was 12-percent behind. By contrast, Chinese domestic bookings are 8-percent ahead, so one might say that ‘staycationing’ is the current Chinese travel trend.”
He added, “The most popular Chinese outbound destination this summer is Japan, to where flight bookings are 67-percent behind 2019. It is followed by South Korea, 43-percent behind; Hong Kong, 25 percent behind; and Thailand, 57-percent behind.”
Before the pandemic, Ponti also noted that “China was the fourth most important source market for summer tourism to the Philippines; this year it is the 12th, 71-percent behind 2019.” ForwardKeys, a knowledge partner of the World Travel & Tourism Council, gathers global data on actual flight bookings to and from destinations.
Face-to-face interviews
The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) has announced the pilot-test of its electronic visa (e-visa) platform for Chinese visitors starting August 24, despite widespread national security concerns among the local intelligence community. Local tourism leaders also noted that the e-visa implementation occurs during “Hungry Ghost month” (August 16-September 24), when Chinese stay away from doing travel-related activities.
Meanwhile, Senator Nancy Binay, chair of the Senate Committee on Tourism, welcomed the e-visa platform as a means to ease travel into country and increase visitor arrivals. But in a mix of Filipino and English, she warned in a news statement, “Transnational crimes are now more widespread, such as human trafficking and prostitution from mainland China. How sure are we that those who received the e-visa are legitimate tourists?”
She supported the DFA’s stance “to require face-to-face interviews with tourist visa applicants, whose profiles fall in marked categories.” She noted that the Philippines is the only Asean country with a Tier 1 status under the US State Department’s annual human trafficking report.
Need for ‘safety nets’
As of July 26, the Philippines welcomed just 137,822 tourists from China, since the latter reopened its borders to outbound travel. In 2019, China was the second largest source market for tourists for the Philippines, accounting for 1.7 million of the total arrivals of 8.3 million. Thus, the Department of Tourism had been pressing the DFA to implement the e-visa platform and speed up the latter’s issuance of visas to Chinese travelers.
However, the DFA noted that Chinese outbound travel has been sluggish mainly due the slowdown in China’s economy and large-scale youth unemployment. (See, “DOT lauds e-visa for Chinese tourists; but will they come?” in the BusinessMirror, July 31, 2023.) Tourism analysts likewise point to the slow passport renewals in China and inadequate international flight capacities as among the reasons Chinese outbound travel has not sharply grown as initially projected.
“With the gradual return of tourism, we also cannot ignore that China is a big market. I share the opinion that we have to take advantage of the global ‘revenge tourism’ phenomenon, but targeting visitor quotas need not dilute national security interests,” said Binay. “At the end of the day, safety nets in homeland security should be in place. Visa applicants must demonstrate their eligibility of an e-visa be it for tourism, business or emergencies purposes. The policy must apply to all foreign nationals, and we always have to be on the side of caution and prudence,” she stressed.