China Poised for Swift Post-Pandemic Recovery

Like the tourism economies in many other parts of the world, China’s travel and tourism sector is now firmly on track toward a post-pandemic recovery.

Newly released data from the World Travel & Tourism Council’s (WTTC) 2023 Economic Impact Research (EIR) reveals that China’s travel and tourism GDP will grow more than 150 percent this year.

Additionally, despite the travel industry downturn caused by the global pandemic, WTTC expects about 11.5 million jobs to be created by the travel and tourism industry this year in China. That translates to about one in 10 workers in China being directly or indirectly employed by the industry.

Achieving the projected 11.5 million travel industry jobs in 2023 would put China about 7.9 million jobs short of pre-pandemic or 2019 employment levels — or about 10 percent lower than 2019 employment figures.

International Visitors Return to China

International visitor spend in China is also increasing. The WTTC’s forecast on this front projects more than 50 percent growth in visitor spend for 2023. While that’s positive news, even at that rate of growth China will still be nearly 70 percent below visitor spending levels for 2019, which marked a peak for the country.

China’s travel restrictions, the final remnants of which were lifted in March, played a significant role in some of its lagging figures. Last year, the country’s tourism sector GDP dropped almost 30 percent and accounted for a mere 3 percent of China’s overall economy. That’s a stark contrast to the sector’s contribution to China’s GDP in 2019, when it made up a significant 12 percent of the economy.

Last year also brought more job declines in the tourism industry, rather than recovery. In 2022, travel-industry related employed hit a low of 62.9 million nationally, which amounted to about one in 12 jobs in China.

Similarly, international spend in China also trended downward last year, due again to the effects of continued travel restrictions, which put severe limitations on the sector, the WTTC said. Visitor spend dropped an additional 8.5 percent in 2022, putting it at nearly 80 percent below 2019 highs.

In March, China announced it was reopening its borders to international travelers and resuming visa services, as it continued to lift some of the last remaining coronavirus-related travel restrictions.

“Travel and tourism is a vital driver of economic growth and job creation to China, and we predict a significant boost to the global travel and tourism sector as residents begin to travel once again,” Julia Simpson, WTTC President & CEO, said in a statement. “The fact China has reopened is great news.”

For the coming 10 years, WTTC is projecting that China’s tourism industry will continue to bounce back, eventually accounting for as much as 14 percent of the Chinese economy and employing more than 100 million people.

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