China’s travellers look towards reopening after years at home

Al Jazeera :
Mandy Yang, a marketing professional in Beijing, is all set to travel abroad once China’s borders reopen on January 8.
Yang, 42, and her family renewed their passports in November and have recently been looking for flights to Chiang Mai in Thailand.
For Yang, like many other Chinese, it will be her first overseas trip since China slammed its borders shut in March 2020. “Once I travel, I will want to experience local customs and cuisine,” Yang told Al Jazeera. “I don’t have to buy luxury items, but I will choose to spend my money on four or five-star hotels.”
Not only does Yang appreciate the history and culture of Chiang Mai, which was founded in the 13th century as the capital of the Lan Na Kingdom, but she was also impressed to see Thailand’s tourism ministry propose offering free COVID-19 vaccine boosters to attract tourists. On China’s social media platform WeChat, articles about the so-called “free vaccine package” have been attracting considerable attention.
“The strategies might be different, but the bottom line here is these countries want to keep their citizens healthy and safe first,” said Yang, adding that she planned to get a booster shot during her trip. “Only then can tourists feel safe as well.”
Before the COVID-19 pandemic plunged the country into isolation, China was the world’s largest outbound tourism market, with its tourists spending more than $127.5bn in 2019. After China’s announcement on Tuesday that it would scrap quarantine for arrivals as part of the unwinding of its strict “zero-COVID” policy, Trip.com posted a 254 percent increase in outbound bookings compared with the previous day. On Wednesday, China’s immigration authorities announced that they would also resume the processing of passport applications and issuance of entry and exit permits for travellers bound to and from Hong Kong, which has a separate immigration system from the Chinese mainland.
After nearly three years stuck at home, however, China’s travellers face a growing list of restrictions overseas. The United States, South Korea, Japan, India, Italy, and Taiwan have introduced COVID tests for travellers from China in recent days amid concerns surging cases in the country could lead to the emergence of new and potentially more dangerous variants. Chinese state media have labelled the measures “discriminatory”, while some health experts have questioned their necessity.
While Thailand, which welcomed more than 10 million Chinese visitors annually before the pandemic, has not announced any new restrictions, the prospect of a large influx of travellers with COVID-19 has prompted some unease in the Southeast Asian country.