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China Expert Session - The Highlights

Travel World China | Dateï¼š2020-12-29

Using the latest and most comprehensive travel data in the market, the team at ForwardKeys revealed some dramatic and ground-breaking insights in their quarterly China Expert webinar on Wednesday, December 16. Here are just a few of the highlight, download the full report at the end of the article.

Outbound China travel to boom in 2022

The long-term outlook for China outbound travel is looking promising according to the Traveller Statistics forecast - a new feature just rolled out this week. In 2021, ForwardKeys predicts an increase of 38.7% on year-on-year variation while 2022 will see a giant increase of 83.8%.

The first region to benefit from this excited group of travellers from China will be neighbours in the Asia-Pacific, followed by Europe and in the last position, North America. "We see that some destinations' borders have already been opened for Chinese travellers as the Asia Pacific is the most dependent on Chinese arrivals, and in the long-term, we predict that regional travel to the Asia Pacific will remain the fastest-growing destination in post-COVID travel," says Nan Dai, China Market Expert at ForwardKeys.

Up, up, and away: Domestic tourism takes-off in China

With nowhere to go outside of the border, the denizens of China took up the government initiatives and cheap air offers to at least explore their own backyard.

Domestic travel fully recovered by mid-September and has even surpassed 2019 levels in the months since then. So much so that airlines have been increasing their seat capacity for domestic travel over Winter and the New Year - the opposite of what is happening across Europe now.

In fact, forward-looking bookings for NYE is up by 8% YoY. Looking further afield at another popular time to travel - the Lunar New Year, to compare against Lunar New Year in 2019 without the effect of the COVID-19 outbreak, issued tickets are around 55% of what they were at the equivalent moment in 2019.

The peak travel time this year takes place Saturday before the Golden week, the first day of the holiday; the last day of the holiday and Sunday in the following week as the wave of people return home. While in 2019, peak travel times are more concentrated. This might because the government have asked travellers to avoid crowding in the airports as much as possible during this winter festive season.

Beijing, Shanghai and Sanya are already at the forefront according to bookings issued. Things are bound to get better as last-minute bookings are made closer to date. "One trend we've observed this year is the number of last-minute bookings. It's become very common, so much so that for domestic travel people plan their trip in 0-4 days before hopping on their plane! I think this will become part of the "New Normal" even post-crisis," adds Dai.

Hainan, a zebra with new stripes

The province of Hainan has gone from a backwater region of China to a fully blossomed shoppers paradise this year and it's only going to "get bigger and better" according to Marina Giuliano, Director of Travel Retail at ForwardKeys.

Not only does the latest data from the Chinese Shopper Tracker show that the number of transactional spend is increasing month-on-month but it shows that Hainan truly has mass appeal to a wider network of people from all over China.

And not only are they shopping for beauty products, but electronics is on the rise as is spirits. "Our Chinese Shopper Tracker has been refined to now also include spend per category, a new feature, to perfect your shopper profile per city or airport. There are real business opportunities to be seized by having access to this kind of data," adds Giuliano.

Sourceï¼šhttps://forwardkeys.com