Unequal Big Country Tourism: Inbound Tourism Expects "Gate"

In December 7th, Beijing held the ninth Capital Tourism Development Forum. This year's focus is on inbound tourism.

In the previous week, in November 27th, the China Tourism Research Institute also held a seminar on inbound tourism. In twenty-first Century, the economic report noted that over the past month or so, a number of tourism summit and forums have been discussing the issue of inbound tourism, and the heat of inbound tourism has risen sharply.

In fact, China's inbound tourism market fluctuated downward after many years of financial crisis in 2008. It didn't bottom up until 2015. In 2017, the inbound tourism market of foreigners began to grow positively. In 2018, China received 141 million visitors, an increase of 1.2% compared with the same period last year, and the income of inbound tourism reached 127 billion 100 million US dollars, an increase of 3% over the same period last year. It is estimated that the number of inbound tourists will keep increasing in 2019, and the income of inbound tourism is expected to exceed 130 billion dollars. "China's confidence in developing inbound tourism has increased unprecedentedly." Dai Bin, President of China Tourism Research Institute, said.

Many tourism companies and experts interviewed by the twenty-first Century economic report said that inbound travel in 2020 would be a little bit worse after a few years of slump.

Re entry tour

China is the first country in the world to travel abroad, but inbound tourism has no similar status.

In 2018, China received 141 million inbound tourists, ranking fourth in the world. However, if the data of tourists from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan were deducted, the number of foreign tourists actually was only 30 million 540 thousand. This data is even less than the number of inbound tourists in Thailand and Japan.

Liu Xiangyan, the head of the International Research Institute of the China Tourism Research Institute, told the twenty-first Century economic report that in 2018, 31 million 190 thousand Japanese visitors were received, an increase of 8.7% compared to the same period last year. Thailand received 38 million 280 thousand visitors, an increase of 8.3% over the same period last year. Even after deducting Chinese tourists, the number of inbound tourists in Japan and Thailand is close to 23 million and 28 million respectively.

Another group of data from the National Bureau of statistics showed that the number of inbound tourists in China increased from 120 million 292 thousand and 300 in 2005 to 133 million 820 thousand and 400 in 2015, an increase of 11.2% over the past 11 years, averaging only one percentage point a year, compared with the 312.9% increase in the number of outbound persons in mainland China in 2005-2015 years. Meanwhile, compared with the growth rate of developed economies (38.9%), emerging economies (57.2%) and Asia Pacific (81.3%), China's growth rate of inbound tourists from 2005 to 2015 is still at a low level.

Because of this, Liang Jianzhang, chairman of the board of directors of Ctrip group, has repeatedly called for the development of inbound tourism in the past three months. He pointed out that outbound travel and outbound travel grew very fast compared with outbound travel, and the entry tour was basically stagnant, which was not commensurate with the development of China's actual economic strength.

Liang Jianzhang revealed that the figures of international authoritative institutions show that China's international tourism revenue in 2018 was only 40 billion dollars, while the first US international tourism revenue was about 200000000000 US dollars, which is five times more than that of our country. Even compared with the Asia Pacific countries, Thailand's international tourism revenue is about 60000000000 dollars, Japan has about 40000000000 dollars, and Australia is close behind. China ranks the top three in the Asia Pacific region.

"The status of inbound tourism is extremely incongruous with the status of China's major powers, and it has worsened in recent years." Liang Jianzhang believes that the downturn of inbound tourism is a great hidden danger for China's economic future, and it is also one of the biggest weaknesses.

Liang Jianzhang pointed out that inbound travel should have an incremental space of 100 billion to 200 billion dollars, which is equivalent to 1% to 2% of GDP. From the perspective of foreign exchange earnings, if China can increase 100 billion to 200 billion US dollars, China's trade surplus will increase by 30% to 60%, not only increasing a large amount of foreign exchange earnings, but also improving the trade.

The appeal of Liang Jianzhang and others has received the general attention of the tourism industry. The reporter has noticed that many recent tourism seminars have begun to focus on inbound tourism, and China Tourism Research Institute, World Tourism Alliance, Google and Ctrip have also released research reports on inbound tourism.

The government has continued to introduce relevant policies to boost the development of inbound tourism. In 2018, the general office of the State Council issued the guiding opinions on promoting the development of tourism in the whole region, and put forward that it is necessary to "formulate the development plan and work plan of the tourist market, and do a good job in the marketing of inbound tourism". In August 2019, the general office of the State Council issued the "opinions on further stimulating the potential of culture and tourism consumption", and clearly put forward the need to improve the inbound tourism environment. Unified inbound tourism promotion platform, providing multilingual services, and improving mobile payment solutions for inbound tourism.

Liu Xiangyan believes that the national level is more systematic in promoting the development of inbound tourism, and more concerned about the satisfaction of inbound tourists at the micro level. It involves not only destination marketing, but also the convenience of inbound tourists in China. She also positively evaluated that in the process of promoting the development of inbound tourism, the state and local governments have continuously explored and innovated in the aspects of visa relaxation, the implementation of shopping rebate policy, the convenience of entry and exit documents, and the incentive policy of inbound tourism service providers, and promulgated corresponding policies.

Inbound tourism rejuvenation

The strength of the policy is driving the inbound tourism market to pick up.

"The overall judgement is that (inbound tourism) is entering a new path to restore growth, but the foundation is not stable yet. 2020 is worth looking forward to, but also full of challenges." Dai Bin made such a judgement on inbound travel.

His confidence comes from monitoring a series of data.

In November 27th, the China Tourism Research Institute released the latest report on China's inbound tourism development. The report points out that China's inbound tourism has entered a steady growth path, the scale of the inbound tourism market has maintained steady growth, the market structure has continued to optimize, and the quality of service has been recognized by tourists. New momentum of sustainable development of inbound tourism is gathering in China.

Liu Xiangyan is the chief editor of the report. She told the twenty-first Century economic report that China's inbound tourism continued to grow steadily since 2015. In 2018, China received 141 million visitors, an increase of 1.2% over the same period last year. The size of the overnight market and the entry market for foreigners has also been steadily expanding. In 2018, China received 62 million 900 thousand overnight visitors and 30 million 540 thousand foreign tourists, which increased by 3.6% and 4.7% respectively, higher than the total number of inbound tourists.

As the number of inbound tourists continues to increase, the income of inbound tourism has maintained steady growth. In 2018, the income of inbound tourism reached 127 billion 100 million US dollars. China's inbound tourism will continue to grow in 2019, and inbound tourism revenue is expected to exceed 130 billion dollars.

The amount of $127 billion 100 million is different from the $40 billion quoted by Liang Jianzhang before. Liu Xiangyan explained that the data of Liang Jian Zhang were obtained directly from the balance of payments. This calculation did not consider the cost of mainland Hong Kong and Macao high frequency tourists in the mainland, the air travel expenses of the twenty million passengers who arrived in China's air flights and the cost of tourists who missed the 3 months to 1 years when the sampling survey was omitted. After supplementing these tourists' expenses, the Ministry of culture and tourism data center re estimated that the international tourism revenue in 2018 was 127 billion 100 million US dollars, up 3% over the same period last year.

Behind the big data fluctuation is the ups and downs of each individual enterprise. Liang Yaofeng, who has been involved in inbound tourism for 20 years, has a deep understanding of this. Liang Yaofeng is general manager of Guohua holiday travel agency. His travel agency's main target market is India. In 1999, he began to set foot in India's tour business in China by chance.

"At the beginning of the year, about two or three hundred people in a year, participating in the tourism trade in a very traditional way, will expand the source of tourists." Liang Yaofeng said that with the economic take-off in India and the expansion of Sino Indian contacts, the number of holiday receptiones in Guohua was from several hundred to thousands of people. From 2015, more than 10000 people were in attendance every year, and more than 12000 people were estimated in 2019, with a turnover of about 15 million dollars. Although India is a small market, the potential for growth is considerable.

According to the inbound tourism report, Asia is the most important tourist market in China, accounting for about 60% of the total value of the entry market, followed by the European and North American markets, accounting for 20% and 10% respectively. Liu Xiangyan pointed out that at present, China's main source countries of inbound tourists include Burma, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, the United States, Russia, Mongolia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, India, Canada, Thailand and Australia. "Our neighbors are far more interested in us than in Europe and the United States."

There is a chilly Road on the spring back.

While calling on the industry to increase confidence in inbound tourism, Dai Bin also reminded the inbound tourism market that it still faces many unknowns and challenges.

In fact, China's development of inbound tourism still has many obstacles. Taking India's inbound tourists as an example, Liang Yaofeng's travel agency can receive more than 10000 tourists every year. The whole Chinese market can attract 900 thousand tourists to India every year, but this data is really not counted in India's 2018 outbound trips, which reach 28 million 580 thousand people in India.

Liang Yaofeng told reporters that the first reason for restricting the growth of tourists in India is that the visa convenience is not very good. The visa office of the Chinese Embassy in India will issue visas to travel agencies by quota system in the busy season. "This is a small case, but it will make people feel that China is not very popular because visa cards are there." Liang Yaofeng believes that when we travel overseas, we should pass on the image of a friendly China. Visa facilitation is a welcome idea.

Another reason is related to the serious shortage of flights between China and India. According to Liang Yaofeng, because of the mismatch of personnel exchanges between China and India, there are far more people from India to China than from India to China. Therefore, according to the agreement between China and India, the airlines of the two countries fly 42 flights a week, and now China's air cargo fleet has long been full, but India has not been fully flying. At present, there are only 20 flights a week, so Chinese airlines have the capacity to increase the number of new flights.

The shortage of direct flight capacity seriously restricted the communication of personnel, leading to many tourists from India, Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and even Seoul.

He also pointed out that nowadays many industries such as online education and Chinese enterprises are going out. Many foreign language talents can choose many high paying jobs. They are less willing to engage in inbound tourism, and the loss of inbound talents is also a huge challenge for this industry.

Liang Jianzhang also believes that the concept of tourism image in China is vague and lacks unified positioning, identification and slogans. On the other hand, there are problems such as visa inconvenience, inconvenience to pay, and other untrue reports such as insecurity, pollution and threat. In order to develop the inbound tourism market, Liang Jianzhang suggested that the government should make efforts to create a unified tourism image, spread the image of China in the world language, and show China's peaceful and friendly side, so that people around the world can understand "Friendly China". At the same time, we should enhance visa convenience as soon as possible. Reduce overseas roaming charges and liberate part of the network control of foreign-related and high star hotels WIFI. Development of mobile payment facilities such as foreign bank cards.

Dai Bin also pointed out that the government should further strengthen the policy coordination and mechanism innovation of inbound tourism so as to create a favorable environment for the development of inbound tourism. He noted that the recent deep restructuring meeting of the Central Committee specifically referred to the convergence of reform measures, which indicated that the central government was aware of this problem. Therefore, problems such as tax rebates, visas, roaming charges and so on could be broken or just around the corner.

In addition to the actions of the central government, it is more important to give play to the initiative of local governments and market players in the revitalization of inbound tourism. Dai Bin believes that there should be some bold experiments in some areas, such as pilot projects of foreign investment in travel agencies, such as independent practice of tourist guides, and so on.