As England faces another lockdown, domestic tourism in China is blossoming at around 80 percent of last year's figures thanks to new travel trends and innovations in the Chinese market, an article on the website of the British newspaper The Telegraph has said.
Written by travel writer Thomas O'Malley, the article revealed how China has made the remarkable recovery in tourism while fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.
Noting that a total of 637 million domestic trips were made during the "Golden Week", a week-long public holiday celebrating China's National Day (Oct 1), the article suggested that China's strict anti-COVID-19 measures have helped to shift travel trends of the market.
Due to China's strict quarantine measures for those returning from abroad, globetrotters have instead chosen China's own provinces, turning demand for going overseas into a driver of domestic recovery, said the article.
Chinese citizens made almost 150 million trips overseas in 2018, making it the world's most valuable outbound market with a spending of $277.3 billion at destinations around the world, according to the article.
Following the new trends, the sector has put forward a package of innovative promotions across the country, such as cutting prices or launching more attractive products and offers, to boost the domestic market and recover the industry as soon as possible, the article revealed.
Meanwhile, a second wave of COVID-19 in China is "not really a worry," the article quoted Alex Wang, co-founder of Zanadu, a luxury Chinese travel agency based in Beijing, as saying.
"People generally have confidence in the process and execution of pandemic control in China...and even though most people realise we will never have zero cases nationwide, China has shown local outbreaks can be contained quickly," Wang told the newspaper.
Taking Qingdao -- a popular travel destination on China's east coast famous for seafood and beer, etc -- as an example, the article said the city had arranged for the testing of around 10 million residents in five days after a cluster of infections emerged in October.
Actions like this mean wider measures, which ultimately prove more damaging to the economy, "are not needed", and the country and its tourism industry can remain open for business, said the article.
"I think that by Chinese New Year (February 2021) travel will be back to pre-pandemic levels," Wang was quoted as saying.
