China’s Labour Day travel boom bodes well for spending, but box office fizzles

Inbound travel has emerged as a bright spot in China’s Labour Day holiday spending, while domestic tourism is seeing modest growth amid nationwide efforts to boost consumption during a heated trade war with the United States.

However, in contrast with the rosy travel demand, box office sales were looking to fall short of previous years, initial data showed.

On Thursday – the first day of the Labour Day holiday – inbound travel bookings to China jumped 141 per cent, year on year, according to Trip.com, a major online travel platform.

Data from marketing and tech firm China Trading Desk showed that 1.2 million to 1.5 million inbound travellers – excluding visitors from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan – were expected to enter mainland China over the five-day holiday, marking a more than 50 per cent increase from last year.

Subramania Bhatt, the firm’s founder and CEO, attributed the surge to China’s relaxed visa-free entries and tax-refund policies, as well as improved travel services and growing exposure on social media that has sparked new interest in China as a destination.

To attract more inbound tourists, Chinese authorities have rolled out a series of measures – most recently easing tax-refund rules late last month – as part of broader efforts to boost domestic spending amid rising economic pressure from the trade war.

The county’s domestic tourism also saw modest growth on the first day of the holiday. The number of cross-region trips was expected to rise 8 per cent, year on year, to more than 340 million, Xinhua said in a report on Thursday, citing data from the Ministry of Transport.

South China Morning Post