Updated November 24, 2022
When will China reopen to foreign tourists?
That’s a question frequently put to us since the COVID-19 pandemic started. Many of the people asking this question, unsurprisingly, are consumers who already committed themselves to a trip to China but were forced to cancel due to the pandemic.
The answer to that question is nobody knows. If we have to venture a guess, it would be spring of 2023, three full years after the breakout of COVID-19. Some of our friends in the China travel industry are less optimistic predicting that China won’t be ready for international tourists until the end of 2023. We believe the re-opening would be a gradual process with business travellers and foreign students registered with Chinese universities to be allowed in first. So far, China’s harsh measures in containing the spread of COVID-19 have been widely complained about both at home and abroad. In that context, improvements are being made albeit with extreme caution. For instance, recently a number of Chinese cities with approval from the central government has shortened the quarantine time for international arrivals from 21 days to 10 or 7 days.
Whatever the prediction, it is unlikely that China would allow in foreign leisure visitors before the end of 2022. The latest surge of COVID cases in several major cities across China has made this obvious. The situation in Zhengzhou, a mega-city in central China, is particularly jarring. This is also the city where Apple’s latest iPhone models are being assembled in factories run by its contractor Foxconn. The prospect of China’s reopening to international visitors in the near future is so bleak that many of the remaining businesses dependent on foreigners would go under this winter. Such businesses are mainly in the hospitality sector including travel agencies, inbound tour operators, and restaurants catering to expatriates and international visitors.
China tours - the Great Wall at Mutianyu
