Tourists, please come back, the industry pleads

Jane Zhou is planning a family trip next month, wavering between a trip to nearby Zhejiang Province and the much further seaside of tropical Hainan Province.

The 31-year-old has changed previous travel plans twice already this year because of the novel coronavirus outbreak. In one case, she scrapped a long-distance destination in favor of visiting suburban Shanghai’s Chongming Island and the nearby city of Suzhou.

“We had been dying to go on a holiday since coronavirus was brought under control in March, but we were still concerned about safety and quarantine policies, so we drove only to nearby places,” she explained.

“Now I feel much safer,” she added. “And it’s time to take advantage of heavily discounted, post-pandemic presale travel packages I bought in the last three months.”

Presale deals are among the come-ons offered by airlines, travel agencies and hotels in an effort to woo consumers back and help revive one of the epidemic’s hardest-hit industries.

The World Tourism Organization said international tourist arrivals fell 22 percent in the first three months of the year, and by 57 percent in March alone. It is predicting a 60-80 percent overall drop in 2020, depending on when and where travel restrictions are lifted.

In China, chartered flights for factory workers have been organized and five-star hotels have begun offering takeout meals. Facilities are adopting stringent hygiene standards, and tourist sites are enhancing their amenities with complimentary digital tours and livestreaming events.

Some tourism-related companies are even venturing into new areas to keep themselves afloat.

“We expanded our social media accounts, previously only a complimentary marketing tool, because we have had practically zero business since February,” a small travel agency owner surnamed Zhang told Shanghai Daily.

Her firm specializes in high-end, tailor-made trips to Japan and South Korea.

“We started placing some ads, and we also compiled some history tours in Shanghai related to these two countries, combined with events like baking Japanese-style cake or South Korean-style make-up courses,” she said.

However, Zhang views these new ventures as short-term rescue plans. She said she is seeing some positive signs of an early recovery in domestic tourism.

Restrictions on international travel and cross-province tour groups have not been lifted. Epidemic control measures, such as limiting the number of visitors to no more than 30 percent of the maximum capacity at sites, largely remain in effect.

During the annual May Day holiday, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism said the tourism market recovered by half from last year, despite the restrictions. It reported 115 million trips over the five-day holiday.

Photos of packed crowds also lifted industry confidence for a brisk summer holiday season, usually the best time of year for tourism.

Imaginechina

Caution prevails

Retired chemist Wang Wenjian drove his wife and daughter to Suzhou at the end of March, one day after it was announced that no quarantine would be required. It was the family’s first trip this year.

They argued on whether to stay for a night, and ended up driving back to Shanghai the same day because they weren’t sufficiently confident about staying in a hotel.

Since then their confidence has returned. Wang and his family have been enjoying short trips almost twice a month, often choosing destinations to take advantage of attractive hotel packages.

“My daughter said we will probably never see such good deals again, and we really wanted to have some quality family time outside home,” he said, displaying a breakfast package offered by Marriott International.

The package, which costs 588 yuan (US$82.75), allows one person to have breakfast for a month at more than 100 Marriott hotels across the country.

“When we launched the breakfast package, we wanted to offer an accessible deal to encourage more locals to enjoy fine food in a safe environment,” Lawrence Ng, vice president of sales and marketing for the hotel group in China, told Shanghai Daily.

He added that various recovery programs have been launched to restore confidence, including food delivery and livestreaming series that include DJ parties and cooking classes run by a chef.

For upmarket hotels, such gimmicks are firsts as they struggle to restore consumer confidence and shore up their balance sheets.

All Marriot’s China hotels have reopened. Fifty-eight of them have over 80 percent occupancy, and 19 were fully booked during the May Day holiday.

Ng said the younger generation is coming out much more quickly that older people, and families comprise nearly half of bookings at some of their best-selling hotels.

The group opened two new hotels in April and anticipates more than 30 by the end of the year, including the debut of a new hotel brand.

“This underscores strong demand for our brands and continued optimism for the future of China,” Ng said.

Shen Min and her colleagues at Jin Jiang Travel sent out their last international tour group on Chinese New Year’s Eve in January. After that, cancellations poured in and refunds processed as inbound and outbound travel halted.

Shen, an assistant to the agency’s president in charge of domestic travel, has been developing creative local tours in Shanghai.

“It was only a small fraction of our business pre-pandemic, but now it’s most of what we do,” she told Shanghai Daily. “We need to be creative to attract visitors and convince them to stay out longer. It’s not entirely a bad thing. I didn’t realize there is so much to see in the city.”

One of the travel agency’s most popular offerings nowadays is a trip with professional photographers, usually at outdoor scenic sites.

“Some of our guests bring different sets of clothes to change for photos,” Shen said.

Popular outings are those that involve nature and fresh air — flower gardens, bird sanctuaries and suburban parks.

“It’s a natural reaction to post-pandemic life,” she said. “We try to avoid indoor sites and crowded places.”