“Sizeable headwinds remain” for recovery of outbound overseas tourism from China “in 2024 and possibly 2025,” says a report from banking group Nomura.
The institution added in its Monday memo that “supply-side constraints” had “eased,” in terms of things such as volume of available flights and their cost, and the availability of exit visas for Chinese.
But the weakness of China’s currency the yuan relative to some other major currencies; the condition of the domestic economy; “stagnated” income growth; and high youth unemployment, meant that the “demand side” drag on Chinese consumers’ appetite for outbound travel, was “now starting to kick in”.
Nomura said in its Monday report it expected Chinese passengers “carried by cross-border flights to recover to 73 percent of 2019 levels by the end of 2024 from the current level of 57.9 percent (November 2023), averaging 67 percent [recovery] for full-year 2024”.
The banking group nonetheless said it anticipated that spending by outbound Chinese tourists would “fully recover to 100 percent of 2019 levels for full-year 2024”.
In its assessment of the state of outbound tourism recovery from China, Nomura thought it “worth highlighting that, for both international flights and passengers carried by these flights, we still do not expect them to fully recover until 2025”.
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