China’s overseas travel has never significantly recovered since the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the country lifted all pandemic measures over a year ago, foreign tourism remained substantially lower than pre-pandemic levels.
Data from aviation analytics firm Cirium, reported by Bloomberg, showed outbound airline capacity in 2023 stood at just 60% of 2019 levels.
Trips by Chinese tourists to the U.S. have fallen dramatically. Data from Statista showed that in 2023, just 850,000 Chinese visitors entered the U.S. Although this was more than double the 2022 numbers, it remained substantially lower than the 2.83 million visitors welcomed in 2019.
Globally in 2019, Chinese travelers made 170 million foreign trips in 2019 and spent $248 billion on plane tickets, hotel rooms and luxury items. China’s post-pandemic pullback cut $129 billion from global tourism, according to the Cirium data.
In a recent note on the airline industry, analysts at Bank of America wrote: “The recovery in international travel in China is showing a mixed picture, as China to North America capacity is lagging far behind China to Europe capacity.”
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