It’s been six months since the Chinese Government relaxed laws around Covid-19, effectively reopening Mainland China to mainstream tourism.
But half a year on from reopening, how is travel to China looking? One yardstick is air capacity. And that has mostly returned between Australia and China.
“As it stands at the moment, we have seven to eight mainland Chinese carriers back – Tianjin is the only one that hasn’t returned yet,” Melbourne Airport confirmed in an email to Karryon.
“If we compare July 23 to July 19 on seat capacity, we are at 92 per cent.”
The Victorian hub added that there have not been any “new routes or destinations established since China opened back up”.
Sydney Airport told Karryon it “started the year with just three airlines flying four return services to mainland China a week”.
Now, seven airlines operate some 45 services per week across eight routes.
Next week, a three-times weekly Nanjing service (with China Eastern Airlines) will add to that.
“The recovery of the China market continues to impress, with passenger numbers on the mainland route increasing seven-fold since the start of the year,” Sydney Airport CEO Geoff Culbert said in June.
“This is one of the strongest China recoveries of any international airport globally, which provides a critical boost to Australia’s tourism industry, and the economy more broadly.”
Elsewhere, Brisbane Airport says it “continues to actively speak” with its airline partners about future services.
“We know the market is eager too,” BNE told Karryon.
Group travel
One of the largest operators of tours to China is Wendy Wu Tours. In May, the Asia travel specialist announced that after more than three years away, it was heading back to the country on 6 August 2023.
“China is currently our second most popular destination in terms of bookings, and is in fact exceeding sales expectations across all markets, including Australia,” Wendy Wu managing director Australia, Simon Bell told Karryon.
“This is highly encouraging news and suggests that there is definitely pent-up demand for the destination.
“With travellers being restricted from travel for several years, this trend mirrors what we are seeing across other destinations as travellers continue their return to international travel to tick off their bucket list destinations.”
Another major operator in China, MW Tours, will launch its new brochure in early September and “will have all China packages ready for sale by then”.
“We haven’t started promoting China packages as yet, one because we can barely keep up with the enquiries to other destinations, and two, we think tourism will come back after March 2024 – provided the visa application is easier than now,” MW Tours managing director Navy Wang told Karryon.
“Having said that, we did receive a few enquiries to China for both groups and FIT for travel in either late 2023 or 2024.”
Prior to the pandemic, China was among the top five most popular destinations for Australian travellers. According to Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data, more than 600,000 Aussie residents returned from short-term stays in the country in 2019.
