Chinese Online Platforms View the Great Travel Recovery as a Drawn-Out Process
Skift Take
An unfortunate first-mover in the pandemic, China, in turn, got an early start on its travel recovery. But officials at major travel companies there view a robust bounce back as taking a year or longer — and much of that pace depends on how quickly coronavirus gets neutralized in the rest of the world.
By all accounts, China is coming back from the coronavirus pandemic earlier than almost anywhere else. In the intensely interconnected world of travel, where destinations crave the return of Chinese travelers, and China pins some hope on a rebound of inbound tourism, perhaps it is instructive to see how major Chinese platforms view the hoped-for travel recovery so far.
After all, the Chinese government has removed the requirement that people wear masks in restaurants and other establishments in big cities such as Shanghai, according to the online travel company, Trip.com Group. And, for the week of April 13, Airbnb saw its bookings in 10 major Chinese cities climb nearly 80 percent compared to a month earlier, although that level was still only half the number of bookings of early January, Reuters reported citing AirDNA data.
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Jerry Tang, editor of China Travel News who's based in Guangzhou, China, told Skift China is ahead of the curve in that many people have returned to work. He said it's alright to have some cautious optimism, but "no one really knows for sure that Covid-19 won't rebound before tourism will." "Many companies in China are tap