Amid Covid-19 lockdowns, Chinese tourism turns inward, giving rise to camping and suburb tours; or nothing at all | South China Morning Post
▻https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/article/3176852/amid-covid-19-lockdowns-chinese-tourism-turns-inward-giving
Amid Covid-19 lockdowns, Chinese tourism turns inward, giving rise to camping and suburb tours; Statistics show that Chinese people are still travelling, but they are mostly staying within their city or province And in doing so, spending has fallen off a cliff, with travellers only spending 45 per cent of pre-pandemic levels
Local tourism made up 40 per cent of all business during the recent Labour Day holiday, marking a “considerable increase” from the same period in both 2021 and 2020, leading online travel agency Ctrip said in a report earlier this week.Depending on regional definitions, local tourism is defined as travel within a city or province.One activity that has grown dramatically in popularity is camping, which has become something of a lifestyle trend for Chinese urbanites. Ctrip searches for the term “camping” surged by 90 per cent on the first day of the holiday, the company said.The spectre of Covid-19 hovers over the changing dynamics, as the potential consequence of getting locked out of China, or their home city, has made international tourism for most Chinese people almost impossible.Lvmama, another e-tourism website, said orders for camping products on its platform grew by 70 per cent compared with the same period last year.Ann Xu, an outdoor enthusiast in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province in eastern China, said: “It seems half of the people in my WeChat contact list went camping this past weekend.”“A few years ago, only outdoor enthusiasts would go camping, but now it has become a leisure and social activity for everybody. I think travel restrictions have catalysed this change,” she said.In Shanghai, which has endured a high-profile lockdown for over a month, some residents have taken camping to an extreme, deciding to take a “holiday” within their complex. Amid the lockdown, many people in Shanghai are only allowed freedom of movement within their building, but they cannot leave the complex.“Spring is so beautiful. We must make full use of it even if we cannot exit our community gate,” said Lily Yang, a woman in Shanghai who had just camped on the ground floor of her building.According to the Ctrip report, other popular options included sightseeing in the suburbs and visiting museums and art exhibits as residents simply cannot travel beyond their city limits.However, despite surges in out-of-the-box trips, the reality is that most people are staying at home.Nationwide, the number of tourist trips over the five-day Labour Day holiday dropped by over 30 per cent from last year, standing at 160 million, according to Ministry of Culture and Tourism data.Tourism revenue dropped by about 43 per cent compared to 2021, standing at 64.68 billion yuan (US$9.7 billion), it showed.Compared to pre-pandemic numbers in 2019, the number of trips dropped by 18 per cent, but Chinese people only spent 44 per cent of what they did before the pandemic.The Ministry attributed the drop to Covid prevention and control policies, which are widely adopted across the country.Dozens of mainland cities have imposed total or partial lockdowns to combat the largest Covid outbreak China has experienced, driven by the Omicron variant.
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