The outbound tourism of Chinese citizens has been growing for several years now boosting the economies of many countries worldwide. The inbound tourism however is much less significant.
Chinese tourism professionals expect the outbound sector to exceed the inflow into China by 100 million visits within 5 years.
With continued relaxing of visa policies for Chinese visitors around the world, it is predicted that this imbalance will continue to grow. This is the reason why China plans to reform the visa application process for travelers eager to explore the Asian country.
According to the chairman and CEO of Ctrip, China should work on fixing this problem so that the industry can be competitive on a global scale. He estimated that 7 million Chinese citizens will spend the Spring Festival abroad this year.
“The difficulty of applying for Chinese tourism visas is the first threshold for foreign tourists coming to China,” a representative of Ctrip, Xi Weihang.
Moreover, Chinese tourism industry should develop platforms for visa application in view of creating an easier application process. It would also be very convenient to promote the country more in foreign countries in order to attract more visitors, which has been a weak spot of the industry in the past years.
