Since March 2023, with the resumption of entry visas and the orderly recovery of inbound group tour business, the long-dormant inbound tourism market has ushered in the dawn of recovery. On the occasion of the full moon of visa policy adjustment in China, Ctrip Research Institute said that the current inbound tourism market presents three major consumption characteristics.
1. The growth rate of inbound tourism segment business is obvious. The order volume of hotel package is twice that before the epidemic
Although it will take time for the inbound market to recover on a large scale, from the perspective of the inbound market segment, the recovery has been ignited. Data from Ctrip showed that from March 15 to April 15, inbound tourists based in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and overseas regions had outperformed the same period in 2019 in terms of hotel packages and car rental reservations. Among them, inbound car rental bookings more than doubled compared with the same period in 2019; The order volume of inbound hotel packages (including calendar room hotel packages and pre-sale hotel packages) increased by more than 2 times compared with the same period in 2019.
It is worth noting that the current order volume of inbound tourism segment market is higher than before the epidemic, which is mainly influenced by the improvement of product coverage on the supply side. Under the epidemic, people's travel radius is significantly shortened, and the trend of hotel staycation is rising. Over the past two years, overseas users have developed the habit of "hotel hoarding" and "staycation". What used to be the fulcrum of the recovery of the domestic tourism market is becoming a new growth point for the recovery of the inbound tourism market.
From the perspective of the May Day tourism market, according to the data of Ctrip, by the middle of April, the search popularity of inbound air tickets increased by over 70% compared with the same period in 2019, and the popularity of inbound hotel bookings recovered to 70% of the same period in 2019, the recovery speed is basically the same as that of outbound travel.
2. Asian users become the main force of inbound consumption. The number of popular destinations such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Zhejiang fell and the price rose
From March 15 to April 15, Asian countries accounted for 60 percent of the top 20 overseas destination countries in terms of inbound orders, Ctrip data showed. Among them, South Korea, Thailand, Australia, Japan, Malaysia, Cambodia as the resident users, inbound tourism order volume is relatively high. Compared with the same period in 2019, inbound travel orders of users from Thailand increased by more than 80%, while inbound travel orders from users from Singapore and the United Arab Emirates increased by more than double.
The willingness to spend on inbound tourism in countries with long - term destinations cannot be underestimated. In the same time dimension, inbound travel orders from UK users have more than doubled compared to the same period in 2019, which is also the highest growth rate among the top 20 destination countries by order volume. In addition, inbound travel orders from Russian users increased by nearly 30% compared to the same period in 2019, while inbound travel orders from French users increased by nearly 50% compared to the same period in 2019.
In terms of popular inbound tourist destinations, Guangdong, Shanghai, Beijing, Zhejiang and Jiangsu ranked top 5. The order remains largely unchanged from the same period in 2019. It is worth noting that popular destinations for entry showed a decline in volume and a rise in price.
3. The number of inbound users after 2000 increased by more than 90% compared with that before the epidemic
Three years after the epidemic, the main force of inbound tourism consumption is still the post-90s and post-80s generation. From March 15 to April 15, those born in the 1990s and 1980s together accounted for more than 63 percent, while those born in the 2000s accounted for 15 percent, Ctrip data showed. It has become the third largest consumer in the inbound tourism market, surpassing those born in the 1960s and 1970s. Compared with the same period in 2019, the number of inbound orders from the post-00s group increased by nearly 90%, and the amount of bookings increased by more than four times.
From the perspective of user gender, from the dimension of order volume, male users account for 52%, slightly ahead of female users. And the amount of female users and male users opened a large gap. Compared with the same period in 2019, bookings by female and male users increased by 50 per cent and 20 per cent. It is worth noting that parent-child tourist households are also a non-negligible presence in the inbound tourism market. Data from Ctrip showed that from March 15 to April 15, the number of post-10th generation users increased by 50% compared with the same period in 2019, and the amount spent increased by more than five times.
