China reopens to tourists | WARC | The Feed

China reopens to tourists

China will resume issuing all categories of visa since the beginning of the pandemic, opening up the possibility of foreign tourism in the country.

According to Reuters, it’s unlikely that the move will trigger a tsunami of tourists or that it will accelerate China’s economic growth by much.

Who benefits?

But there are some key brands in the space that are likely to do well, notably cruise ships that pass through the port of Shanghai or major international hotels catering to business travellers.

After three years of Covid-related business difficulty, a normalisation of travel and the resumption of face-to-face contact may also help to smooth out supply chains to and from a country that had been one of the world’s key sources of economic growth.

The politics of it all

A lot has changed in the three years since the pandemic took hold, as much in geopolitics as in business, and China is broadly seen as a trickier destination for events businesses and tourists.

"It's common to use tourist visas to come to China on business, but I don't know how enthusiastic institutional investors will be to do so, after all the drumbeat of scary news," Duncan Clark, founder of BDA, a Beijing-based investment consultancy, tells Reuters.

Sourced from Reuters