Outbound group tour resumes
2023-02-08
Great inspiration to tourism practitioners
The 20 pilot countries are Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, Maldives, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Laos, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Kenya, South Africa, Russia, Switzerland, Hungary, New Zealand, Fiji, Cuba and Argentina.
Although the pilot destinations are limited, the news is still encouraging. It has been over three years since outbound group tours were suspended by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism on January 24, 2020.
“We have been looking forward to this day for three years. It is a great inspiration for tourism practitioners,” said Liu Shengbo, general manager of Hunan Huatian International Travel Service Co., Ltd., which has developed tourism products in Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, Maldives and other countries.
The data from Ctrip show that in the week after the Spring Festival, the bookings on outbound group tours and “air ticket plus hotel” package products grew more than four times compared with the week of the holiday. Thailand still ranked first among the outbound group tourism destinations. Maldives, Hong Kong, Macao, Egypt, New Zealand as well as other countries and regions were also popular with tourists.
In addition, the overseas long-distance travel market gradually recovers. The air tickets with a per capita price of 27,999 yuan for the first outbound group travel flight leaving Shanghai on March 18 for New Zealand on Ctrip were sold out.
Hunan Overseas Travel has also launched a series of package tour products. The price of direct flights from Changsha to Bangkok from March 1 ranges from 3,180 yuan to 6,280 yuan.
Outbound tourism market recovers slowly
The recovery of the outbound group tourism market will take quite a long time due to exit and entry formalities, the capacity of international air routes as well as the limited reception capacity of local travel agencies.
“The time to restart outbound group tours is earlier than we expected.” Xiong Dexiang, chairman of Hunan China Travel Service Co., Ltd., said that the outbound travel market will not reach a peak in a short time because it will take some time for travel agencies to reconstruct the supply chain and product system, and build a talent team. Moreover, the concept of tourism consumption of consumers has changed, with more emphasis on safety than on service quality.
Xiong Dexiang said that most of the countries among the 20 pilot destinations are in Southeast Asia. At present, Hunan China Travel Service has launched the first batch of tourism products in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. Outbound group tours are dominated by high-quality small package tours. Although Switzerland and Serbia in Europe are on the list, it is still difficult to develop high-quality tourism products because of the travel habits of Hunan people.
A large number of international flights resumed after the Spring Festival holiday, further facilitating outbound travel. However, at present, there are only about ten international flights from Changsha a week, so the transportation capacity is limited. Liu Shengbo said that many local travel agencies in Thailand have not resumed work, and there has been a massive loss of employees. It will take a long time for outbound group travel to become as popular as before the epidemic.
Against a background of limited resources, people’s demands for outbound tour has just been unleashed. Many of these people are middle and high-end customers and have high requirements for tourism quality, which urges travel agencies to speed up efforts to eliminate the resource bottleneck and launch high-quality products to meet the needs of the market. The outbound tourism market in the first half of this year is expected to undergo a process of preparation, transition and adjustment, and then recover slowly to the normal level.
