Flights from Europe are back to pre pandemic frequencies but I haven’t noticed any influx of Euros into Shanghai (which is the place Europeans seemed to love the most before Covid). I think this visa free policy is a recognition that visitors (and investments) from the EU are well behind expectations.

For sure.
Not saying it's recovered; but I am predicting it will...eventually. They are controlling it with a tap now, lets see how far they need to open that tap up for it to work.
Early days yet. Let this new slew of visa relaxations take effect. I reckon it will be a busy spring/summer '24....although I much prefer the emptier airports as they are now, ngl!

Oh, I bet you a nice coffee that China will be back on their vacation list soon enough. Spring 2025 at the latest. :tu:

Cheap airfares and easy visas should certainly help, but making the country desirable to visit again is something they seemingly haven't figured out yet.

At least in the cases of my sister, my dad, my favorite uncle, and many of my friends who used to live in Beijing/Shanghai during the fun years, there is honestly zero interest. Sure, I blame their willingness to buy into media spin for a large part of this, but their minds are currently unflappable.

Even from North America, price is no longer a blocker. You can fly NYC-PVG round trip for as low as $1060 in the spring on JL. In addition to poor reputation of China, high inflation in the West and layoffs in tech and other high paying industries are also not helping. Half measures that only further complicate entrance requirements is not going to attract anymore visitors (look at how long the wiki for the TWOV article is!)

I don't understand the pessimism regarding an eventual rebound in foreign visitors, at least from Europe. I believe that at least for us in Europe, there is still interest to visit as China remains an attractive place for tourism. :confused:. The people I've talked to in Germany and France see China as offering a lot of things to see from a historical and outdoors perspective.

I believe come spring and summer, there will be an influx from Europe, as more people take advantage of the visa free scheme. What limits us in Europe is our continued economic struggles, as we're still suffering from high inflation and degraded purchasing power and thus, an inability to take long distance trips and spend much on holidays.

Remember when this used to be $500 RT? :o

Totally agree. 8-10 years ago every 20 something year old in the US was interested in making a trip to China. It started to drop off around 2016, we had a big discussion on flyertalk with jiejie about it for those of you who were around then and remember.

Today, at this moment, I doubt that number would even be 5%. There was limited travel for 3 years and when you speak with younger people they have many other places they would like to go first. Literally no young people I talk to have plans to go to China. And once you get married and have kids, then travel destinations switch to beaches and Orlando. It will take years to improve.

I don't know it will be significantly better in Europe. I have discussed convening production meetings in China with French and German customers and they are saying they will go if they absolutely have to but prefer we move the meetings anywhere else.

Exactly. To say the least, I don't think the wolf warrior press releases helped China's image before the pandemic and then the pandemic management made China's image even worse. There is no active tourism campaign that I have heard about so it will take a heck of a long time before people's minds start to change.

ON the business side, increasingly over the last two years I am being asked if production can be moved out of China, especially with prospective new customers. It's the first question we are asked. And moving production takes a huge effort which involves in person meetings on the ground so that decreases people's availability to travel to China as well.

These are trends which are not going to change either quickly or without more effort on China's part.

Felt like a million years ago. I went to Shanghai for the first time since the pandemic earlier this week.

How did you like it? Notice any big changes?

One big change in tourism for this old thread. 2023 vs 2024;
Noticed a lot more Russians in the Sanya Dadonghai bay tourist resorts during October 2024 vs 2023. I'm sure the visa free area for some countries helps, but also there are 3 direct flight charters from Russia every week to Sanya. And they are staying at "Marriott" hotels, they like the Infinity pool at the Autograph. Which is also a favorite pool for the Chinese gen Z crowd for their IG and TikTok posts. The Autograph is also opening a Casa Corona boardwalk pool bar in November. (party time)

Russians were everywhere in Sanya pre Covid. No surprise they are coming back.

sanya notes
 

I've had many trips to Sanya over the past 15 years & stayed at about a dozen hotels in four different bays in Sanya. The Yalong & newer Haitang bay areas always seemed to have about 10-20% foreign tourists. 2023 was about 2-5% in Yalong & Dadonghai bays. This October trip was only to Dadonghai bay staying in the Autograph & JW. The JW has an EL, which doesn't exist at most of the other Sanya Marriott 'resorts'. Also noted the Russian tour groups don't offer the Marriott EL benefit options at this JW,
I'll be back there for a couple weeks in January before the CNY chaos starts and see what's different in the other Sanya bays.

Can someone DM me a good VPN option? It seems Astril is not useable anymore

You probably meant to post in this thread?
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/chin...vpn-china.html

What protocols are you using? Assuming you contacted their tech support before posting here, what did they advise?

DM sent