Inbound travel set to continue recovery trend

Optimized visa policy, nation's positive image attracting more foreign tourists

Experts have estimated that China's inbound tourism market will maintain its continuous recovery for the rest of the year and could return to the pre-COVID level reached in 2019, in view of its good performance in the first half of the year.

The latest figures from the National Immigration Administration showed that foreigners made about 14.64 million trips to the Chinese mainland in the first six months of 2024. The China Tourism Academy estimated that about 11 million of those trips were for tourism purposes — a number that is roughly 70 percent of the figure for the same period in 2019.

In 2019, foreign tourists made 31.88 million visits to the mainland, and the total number of inbound visits was 145 million, including trips from the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions and Taiwan.