China’s Tourists to Spend Nearly $1 Trillion on Holidays at Home
- Chinese tourist spending is important travel recovery marker
- Chinese $1 trillion spend on mainland trips hits all-time high
Tourists visit the ecological lotus pond in Huaying city, Sichuan province.
Photographer: CFOTO/Future Publishing/Getty Images
Chinese tourists are making up for the lost holidays of the past few years, splashing cash on travel at home and abroad, putting spending on track to exceed pre-pandemic levels for the first time — an important benchmark in the industry’s recovery.
Chinese holidaymakers will spend 1.8 trillion yuan ($250 billion) this year on trips internationally — about 10% more than they did in 2019, according to data from the World Travel and Tourism Council, an industry group that conducts travel research. Chinese tourists embarking on adventures closer to home are also forecast to pump a record 6.79 trillion yuan into the mainland economy this year, also topping the pre-pandemic level, according to a council report conducted with Oxford Economics.