China Gears Up for a Travel Boom: Visa-Free Expansion Sparks Lunar New Year Excitement!

Inbound tourism to China is anticipated to rise dramatically during the forthcoming Lunar New Year holiday, fueled by the nation’s widening of its visa-free entry roster and additional initiatives to entice foreign visitors and rejuvenate its travel industry.

As reported by Trip.com, a prominent online travel booking service in the nation, total purchases for inbound travel during the timeframe – spanning from January 28 to February 4 this year – have surged by more than 200 percent compared to the prior year.

Travel bookings from South Korea experienced an increase of 452 percent year-on-year, while Singapore, Japan, and the United States are also notably present in the list of countries of origin for inbound travelers.

“The newly adopted visa-free regulation for South Korean travelers has been especially crucial, attracting substantial numbers of Korean tourists to locales such as Harbin, Chengdu, and Shanghai,” stated the platform in an announcement.

This represented a year-on-year increase of 33.6 percent according to the National Immigration Administration, surpassing the 11.1 percent rise in total trips taken by mainland Chinese travelers and a 12.8 percent increase in journeys made by residents of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau.