100 Million Chinese Projected to Travel Overseas in 2021: How Realistic Is That?
Photo Credit: Chinese free independent travelers exploring Switzerland. Switzerland Tourism
Skift Take
It would be fantastic if 2021 would see 100 million mainland Chinese traveling overseas. The first huge swell is touted to begin during the Lunar New Year holiday in February. But like a horoscope, it's just a prediction. Still, destinations are wise not to be caught off-guard should the big moment happens.
After a sensational National Day Golden Week holiday last October, hopes are mounting that 2021 will see Chinese leisure travelers going overseas as soon as February, making up for the interrupted Lunar New Year holiday they endured this year.
China Outbound Tourism Research Institute, better known as COTRI, even goes as far as forecasting 100 million international trips by mainland Chinese in 2021, sealing China “as the number one international tourism source market again” and well elbowing out the number two, USA, which “will see much lower outbound numbers especially in the first half of 2021,” said COTRI CEO Wolfgang Georg Arlt.
China is the “tallest within a group of dwarfs" in recovery, and the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel “looks very much like a Chinese lantern,” he said.
The forecast is based on compelling evidence of huge pent-up demand, but the more wobbly grounds that the virus is almost defeated in East Asia and vaccines will “hopeful
