The tourism industry, which has been under pressure for three years under the impact of the epidemic, achieved an increase in visitor volume and income during the past New Year's Day holiday, showing a recovery trend. However, the follow-up impact of the spread of the epidemic continues, and many realities at this stage also indicate that although the recovery trend of domestic tourism has emerged, it may still be difficult to fully recover to 2019 levels in 2023.
End of the New Year's holiday:
Is the first shot of tourism recovery in the New Year?
With the release of the new ten articles and Class B management policies, the services related to the itinerary card have been officially taken offline, and there is no need to check the health code and nucleic acid report except for special places.
Now that domestic travel is finally no longer constrained by epidemic prevention measures, as the first small holiday after the epidemic is released - the 2023 New Year's Day holiday, it is also expected to start the first shot of tourism recovery in the New Year.
Judging from the relevant data of tourism released by all parties, the New Year's Day holiday has indeed released a signal that the domestic tourism market is picking up and recovering.
Meituan data shows that tickets for cross-Chinese New Year's Eve characteristic neighborhoods and theme parks this year increased by more than 10 times month-on-month. According to Ctrip's report, nearly 60% of users chose to travel across provinces during this year's New Year's Day holiday, compared with less than 40% of users in 2022. According to the Fliggy platform, car rental bookings in popular tourist cities during the New Year's Day increased by more than 3 times compared with the previous month; The number of room nights booked in star hotels and country houses increased by more than 30%.
From the perspective of travel groups, the first wave of "Yangkang" people is the main tourism consumer group of this New Year's Day holiday. Mafengwo big data shows that among the tourists traveling during the New Year's Day holiday, consumers in first-tier and new first-tier cities accounted for 73% of consumers in first-tier and new first-tier cities where the peak of infection was flattening some time ago.
From the perspective of travel destinations, "ice and snow tour" and "cold tour" are the two major themes of New Year's Day holiday tourism: Northeast Ice and Snow World, Yabuli, Changbai Mountain, China Snow Country, "Arctic" Mohe and other classic ice and snow tourist attractions and Sanya, Xishuangbanna, Lingshui, Haikou, Xiamen, Wanning and other warm weather tourist resort cities are the most popular tourist destinations.
Take the "big hit" Sanya, which has attracted much attention this time, for example. According to data from Sanya Tourism Promotion Bureau, during the New Year's Day holiday this year, the average daily passenger flow of Sanya Airport exceeded 30,000, a year-on-year increase of 15%, driving the average occupancy rate of hotels and homestays to more than 80%.
Topics such as "the first wave of Yangkang has flown to Sanya", "Sanya's recent hotel rooms are almost sold out", "Sanya's 180,000 nightly sky-high hotel rooms are difficult to find", "Sanya homestay owners earn back three years of losses in one month" and other topics have also caused heated discussions on social platforms.
From the data at the national level, according to the data center of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, during the New Year's Day holiday this year, the number of domestic tourism trips and tourism revenue both increased in the range, with a total of 52,713,400 domestic tourism trips, an increase of 0.44% year-on-year; The tourism revenue reached 26.517 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.0%.
The year-on-year increases of "0.44%" and "4.0%" are not large in terms of numbers, far from reaching the explosive level of "revenge tourism" that many people expect. If calculated on a comparable basis, the number of domestic tourists and tourism revenue during this year's New Year's Day holiday only recovered to 42.8% and 35.1% of the same period in 2019, respectively.
Nevertheless, the result of "year-on-year growth" is already a rare achievement for the tourism industry, which has been hit hard in recent years, at least it means that consumers' travel confidence and willingness to spend have rebounded.
The coronavirus pandemic is an unprecedented crisis,
The tourism industry has experienced a long-stop blow from "soaring" growth to "breakdown"
In the past three years, under the shadow of the epidemic, the global economy has suffered Waterloo, and many industries have been hit hard, among which the tourism industry is regarded as a "serious" industry by many people.
However, before the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, the development of mainland tourism can be described as a rapid progress, which has played an increasingly significant role in driving economic growth and occupies an important position in the national economy.
The number of annual tourist arrivals has repeatedly reached new highs, from 1.902 billion in 2009 to 6.006 billion in 2019, and the total revenue of the tourism industry has also increased from 1.01 trillion yuan in 2009 to 5.73 trillion yuan in 2019, with an average annual compound growth rate of 18.9%.
In 2019, the overall revenue of the mainland tourism industry was 6.63 trillion yuan, and the contribution to the overall GDP was 10.94 trillion yuan, accounting for 11.05%.
However, on the eve of the Spring Festival in 2020, the new crown pneumonia epidemic suddenly hit, and the development of domestic tourism was forced to press the "pause button" and suffered a cliff-like decline.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the total revenue of the mainland tourism industry in 2020 was 2.23 trillion yuan, only 38.93% of 2019; The number of passengers was 2.879 billion, only 47.94% of 2019.
In the following two years, the new crown epidemic has been repeated, and although there was a slight increase in 2021 compared to 2020, the number of trips (3.250 billion people) and tourism revenue (2.92 trillion yuan) only recovered to 54% and 50% of 2019 respectively.
Under the long-term suspension blow brought about by the epidemic, many tourism-related enterprises have encountered an existential crisis, and traditional enterprises such as travel agencies, airlines, and hotels have borne the brunt.
According to the "Survey on the Operation Status of Small, Medium and Micro Tourism Enterprises under the Epidemic" released by the statistical agency Fastdata, more than 92.3% of travel agencies in the country still lost money in 2021.
Under such circumstances, many enterprises have broken their arms to survive, many high-quality assets have been sold at a low price, small and medium-sized tourism enterprises have fallen into a shutdown crisis, and a large number of enterprises have gone bankrupt.
The impact of the pandemic has also revealed the inherent fragility of the development of the tourism industry.
Vulnerability refers to the degree to which the system is shocked when the risk occurs, reflecting the nature or state of the system's likelihood of being shocked or harmed, and can be simply understood as the loss suffered due to uncertainty.
As a product of "Guotai Minan", the development of tourism has distinct characteristics such as clustering, mobility, production and consumption, and is closely related to the social economy and natural environmental conditions, and is a typical environment-sensitive industry with vulnerability in the face of major external shocks.
Unlike previous tourism crises, the impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic on the tourism industry is unprecedented, both in terms of time span and spatial span.
The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) report pointed out that the pandemic was the worst crisis for international tourism since records began in 1950, affecting tourism in all regions of the world, with the number of international arrivals falling by 73% and 71% in 2020 and 2021 compared to 2019.
The tourism industry is deeply affected by socio-economic development and residents' income levels, and the impact of the epidemic on the social economy is all-round, and a large number of enterprises have laid off employees, cut wages, and delayed the payment of wages.
Moreover, unlike the "off-site consumption" and "indirect contact" of agricultural products and industrial products, tourism is a comprehensive industrial sector that provides services for people's long-distance travel, and is characterized by "face-to-face" communication and interaction.
In other words, the value creation of tourism is premised on the realization of the long-distance movement of population, and the two-way spatial transfer of tourists from the source to the destination is a necessary condition for completing tourism activities.
Regardless of the source or destination, once the crisis restricts the flow of people in different places, it means that tourists cannot carry out tourism activities, and tourism-related enterprises will fall into the dilemma of being unemployed.
Local tours, excursions, camping...
The epidemic has forced out new products in the domestic tourism market
In the three years from 2020 to 2022, the mainland not only implemented strict prevention and control policies to restrict the movement of people, but also implemented a "circuit breaker" mechanism for the tourism industry - provinces, autonomous regions and cities with medium and high-risk areas will immediately suspend travel agencies and online travel companies from operating inter-provincial group tours and "air ticket + hotel" business in the province.
The tourism industry is an open system complex, and all links in the industry are highly interdependent, accompanied by a series of chain reactions such as flight cancellation, tour group withdrawal, accommodation check-out and scenic spot ticket cancellation, which further aggravates the systemic vulnerability of the entire tourism industry.
At first, the industry generally believed that the epidemic would last for a short time, so it did not focus on customizing the tourism development strategy under the normalization of the epidemic, but preferred to seize the market more quickly after the epidemic ended.
Later, the epidemic prevention and control became normalized, which forced the domestic tourism industry to carry out crisis management and adjustment, and many new changes occurred in the domestic tourism industry from the user demand side to the product supply side.
On the one hand, the long-term downturn in the tourism industry has weakened the confidence of practitioners, and many companies have implemented simple response policies such as layoffs to ensure the integrity of the capital chain and the circulation of cash flow by reducing stores and daily one-way expenditures.
☉On May 23, 2022, restaurants that could not dine-in and sold vegetables were not available
Some operators who cannot afford high maintenance and labor costs directly choose to withdraw, which accelerates the segmentation within the tourism industry and strengthens the head effect.
On the other hand, traditional travel agencies, hotels, and leisure and entertainment industries have begun to focus on the growing number of local leisure and short-trip services, and new products and services have been created.
For example, Shanghai Spring Travel Agency's "City Micro Tour", CTS Travel's "International Quality Domestic Tour", Ctrip Travel's "Live Streaming Goods", and New Century Tourism's "Country Micro Vacation".
Many star hotels, such as Four Seasons Hotels, Hyatt Regency Hotels, Shangri-La Hotels, InterContinental Hotels, etc., have begun to sell breakfast, lunch and dinner bento boxes through business expansion into online takeaway platforms.
Some scenic spots have gradually popularized online appointments and followed up nucleic acid testing sites, which not only reduces management costs but also prevents the spread of the epidemic to a large extent; In addition, some attractions use VR and AI technology to create a 3D virtual environment and launch services such as "online cloud tours".
In the past few decades, the "local tour" market has been in the long-tail zone, with a high degree of individual customization and low degree of organization. Now, due to the impact of epidemic prevention and control policies, the spatial distance of tourism flow has been greatly compressed, and the trend of users going out to parade has gradually shown a trend of routine, leisure and outdoor.
With local, suburban and surrounding areas as the main tourist areas, and weekends as the main tour time, the "micro-vacation" method has sprung up, quickly turning the deserted areas of the city and its surroundings into hot spots, and the significance of weekend travel has been continuously amplified.
Mafengwo big data shows that 89% of consumers traveling in 2022 like "peripheral travel", and 79% prefer "self-driving travel", which has also brought about a boom of "exquisite camping", and about 55% of users have carried out camping activities in 2022.
In addition, in order to avoid the crowds, more and more young people no longer go to popular tourist cities, but "reverse tourism", choosing non-famous tourist cities and pristine niche destinations in pursuit of quiet, leisurely and low-cost vacations.
The recovery trend is already emerging
However, it may still be difficult to fully return to 2019 levels this year
From January 8, 2023, the new coronavirus infection will be adjusted from "Class B tube" to "Class B tube", entry quarantine-free measures will also be implemented, and the tourism industry has waited for three years, finally ushering in an important time node for the full recovery of domestic and international markets.
Many practitioners are cheering and preparing for the recovery of performance, although winter is a relatively low season for tourism, but many tourism companies are still promoting "winter tourism" products. After the end of the New Year's Day holiday, major tourism agencies have also begun to launch more inter-provincial tourism products for the upcoming winter holiday and Spring Festival tourism market.
However, there are still divergent views on the recovery of the tourism industry in 2023.
Dai Bin, President of China Tourism Research Institute, began with "The worst days have passed, and the best times are coming" in "The End and Reconstruction - 2022 Tourism Economy Review and 2023 Outlook" released on January 1, 2023, and said:
"We have reason to raise the tourism economy forecast for 2023 from 'cautiously optimistic' to 'optimistic', and the whole year will show a trend of 'steady start and high and accelerated recovery', and the quarterly growth rate is expected to be higher than the previous month."
Wang Qiyan, director of the Leisure Economy Research Center of Chinese Minmin University, predicts that if the epidemic can stabilize, the tourism industry can recover to about 80% of 2019 on May Day in 2023; During November 2023, it will be able to recover to about 90% of 2019.
However, Wei Xiaoan, president of the leisure and vacation branch of the China Tourism Association, emphasized "calmness", believing that the three-year new crown epidemic is completely different from the SARS epidemic in 2003, and the subsequent impact of the epidemic will continue after the control measures are lifted.
"All decisions still have to follow the epidemic infection," Wei Xiaoan predicted, and in an optimistic scenario, the recovery of the tourism market will go through three stages.
After experiencing a wave of infections on New Year's Day and Spring Festival, it is expected that March will gradually stabilize, and the tourism industry will not recover much.
It is April to June, the spread of the epidemic will be stable, the market recovery will accelerate but not fully recover, urban leisure and rural micro-vacation will recover faster, and traditional tourism enterprises will face greater pressure.
After June, if there are no new mutations in the circulating virus strain, the public will be more receptive to the epidemic infection, and no longer worry about repeated infection or sequelae, when tourism confidence will be truly restored, and tourism may usher in a rapid recovery period.
An industry insider who runs a travel agency also said in an interview with the media, "Some people will feel that as long as the policy is liberalized, the market will return to the pre-epidemic in a short period of time, which is probably just a relatively beautiful imagination." ”
Indeed, despite the liberalization of epidemic control, the epidemic itself is also an important factor that hinders people from traveling.
Now some of the "yang" and "yang" people will boldly go out, and the other part will stay on the sidelines or wait considering the physical state of "yangkang" and the epidemic situation in various places, while the "yang" people choose to stay at home silently for fear of infection.
Moreover, the recovery of tourism is also closely related to factors such as the recovery and activity of local economies and the recovery and growth of urban and rural residents' income. Negatively affected by the epidemic, some urban and rural residents have suffered income setbacks and empty pockets, and even if they travel freely, their willingness to travel may still be low.
☉The high-speed train on January 1, 2023, with less than 10 people
At the same time, after three years of continuous pressure, the tourism industry will also need a recovery period if it wants to restart to its pre-pandemic operation, reception capacity and resource allocation.
For example, during the New Year's Day holiday just past, many hotels suffered a "labor shortage". Previously affected by the epidemic, some hotels saved money by cutting manpower, coupled with the recent staff infection and the increase in the number of people returning home during the Spring Festival, hotels are generally seriously understaffed.
Some hotels are only half open and room rates are correspondingly higher. According to media reports, there are also hotels that offer a high price of 300 yuan / day, but they cannot find temporary workers.
In addition, the tourism market is also different from the past, and profound changes have taken place in terms of tourism patterns, visitor source structure, and market demand. Whether and how much new trends such as peripheral travel and camping tours, formed during the epidemic, will change after the liberalization of long-distance tourism is also a question to be tested.
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China's tourism industry is reborn in a desperate situation and needs to break through multiple obstacles_Tourism China_China.com_China's No. 1 brand of tourism external propaganda http://travel.china.com.cn/txt/2023-01/05/content_85040833.html
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Article picture: Tuworm creative, Yakult
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