COVID-19, Tourism, and China: Seeking Certainties in Uncertain Times

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has been going on for over 3 years. There is no clear sign that different variants of coronavirus will disappear any time soon although majority of the countries in the world, including China, have removed their stringent pandemic control policies. For the time being, China has abolished its zero-COVID policy but has seen soaring cases of daily infections. The world is far from safe to travel and it is likely the virus will be co-habituating with human beings.

Tourism is among the most damaged industries during the pandemic. In the past 3 years, tourism was mostly subjugated to the pandemic situations in different countries. While international tourism already experienced a complete halt due to closure of country borders, China still witnessed a sound scale of domestic tourism in 2021, when the pandemic was under effective control. Globally, in early 2022, most countries had relaxed COVID-control measures and travel restrictions, thus seeing a gradual slow recovery of tourism activities. China, instead, saw itself on a rather unique and bumpy path in its combat with the coronavirus. In April 2022, lockdowns in Shanghai, China’s largest city and one of the economic powerhouses, proved to be most disruptive to people’s life and economic activities. Starting from November 2022, with the new Omicron variants’ exceptionally high transmissibility, it became increasingly difficult to exercise strict ‘zero-COVID’ control, eventually leading to the authorities’ renouncing the policy in mid-December 2022. Not surprisingly, after the relaxation of the COVID control, infection cases were immediately on the rise.

The year of 2023 seems to be full of uncertainties with regard to the COVID-19. We are yet to see how COVID-19 further evolves in China and globally. However, in the past 3 years, different industry sectors developed their coping strategies and resilience toward the pandemic and researchers also worked to explore effective industry recovery strategies and solutions (Huang & Wang, 2023). Somehow, some certainties could be sought in these uncertain times. This editorial paper thus aims to provide some observations and analysis of the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on China tourism, discuss the trends of China tourism in the COVID new normal era, and introduce JCTR’s special issue ‘Tourism recovery under COVID-19: Experiences from China.’

Impact of COVID-19 on China tourism

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, tourism researchers have been quick in researching the impact of COVID-19 on the tourism industry in different scales (i.e. sector, country, region) (Huang & Wang, 2023). Huang and Wang (2023) reviewed the COVID-19-related empirical studies published in the social science citation index (SSCI) quartile one and quartile two tourism and hospitality journals in the first 2 years of the pandemic. They found that nearly 9% of the papers published in the journals in the reviewed period are COVID-19-related; China, as a study context or a country of study, attracted 77 articles in the sampled articles, ranking second only to the United States. A majority of the studies can be regarded as COVID impact studies, including studies of ‘impact on consumer psychology, experience and behavior’ (42%), ‘impact on industry or industry sectors’ (17.5%), ‘impact on industry workers or employees’ (12.3%).

A few studies examined the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on Chinese tourists’ travel psychology and behavior. Specifically, Jin et al. (2022) surveyed over 3,388 Chinese nationals regarding their travel consumption and decision-making in the pandemic. The survey was conducted 8–10 March 2020 and the study results ‘suggest that the travel demand seems to be temporarily suppressed and could rebound to normalcy relatively quickly when travel is perceived as relatively safe’ (p. 758). Similarly, Huang et al. (2021) applied two waves of nation-wide survey in China, one in February 2020, and another in June 2020, to track the impact of COVID-19 on Chinese nationals’ travel and tourism behavioral preferences, together with semi-structured interviews. Huang et al.’s (2021) study found that in different stages of pandemic development, people tended to have different perceptions and preference over different travel modes and destinations. In general, nature-based, rural, and cultural destinations are preferred due to the impact of COVID-19; shortened trips around one’s residential area are preferred. X. Li et al. (2021), using data of online ticket sales, also identified that under the influence of COVID-19, people tend to avoid traveling to destination with more confirmed cases and prefer destinations close to home. Other studies on the impact of COVID-19 on tourist behavior or tourism industries in China can be found in the literature. However, given the time varying nature of the COVID-19 influences, impacts of COVID-19 on tourists and tourism in China seems to be time bound and specific study findings can hardly be generalizable beyond a particular time span when a study was undertaken.

Tourism development under COVID-19 in China

The COVID-19 pandemic provided both challenges and opportunities to China’s tourism industry. COVID-19 has reshaped the tourism industry and possibly changed the direction of the industry’s future development. A few changes are worth some detailed discussion.

First, in the short term, COVID-19 may have cascaded effects on domestic, inbound and outbound tourism. Domestic tourism may be less affected by COVID-19 than inbound and outbound tourism. It is expected that as long as domestic travel is permissible, domestic tourism would quickly recover. Even in scenarios that parts of the country may be subject to local infection outbreak in future, domestic tourism activities may still be sustained in other parts of the country. Domestic tourism may also appear to be strategically important to Chinese government. It may be used as an economic stimulus tool to pull up domestic assumption in the country, to counteract possible economic downturn. China has already formulated its dual circulation (external circulation vs. internal circulation) economic system in dealing with the challenges imposed by the United States decoupling actions and threats. As a matter of fact, domestic tourism could be used to be critical policy means in the country’s internal economic circulation, to help stimulate domestic consumption and revive the economy.

As China has opened its borders, inbound tourism is expected to recover. However, in the short term, inbound tourism recovery could be slow. Two issues seem to be more critical in the recovery of China’s inbound tourism. On one hand, an effective control of the COVID infections needs to be achieved and no sudden outbreak is expected in China. Such a situation may not be possible in a short term. On the other hand, the changed global geopolitical landscape and the seemingly more sensitive international relationships between China and some of its major tourist market countries like Japan and Korea may be barriers of inbound tourist flows.

China outbound tourism used to be a main driving force of international tourism world-wide before the COVID-19 pandemic. For the same reasons discussed above, China outbound tourism may not easily recover either. Three years of the pandemic may have changed the Chinese middle class families’ income prospects and a more cautious spending pattern in the uncertain pandemic times may deprioritise outbound holidays. If the Chinese government sees the need of redirecting outbound tourism consumption into its internal economic circulation system to safeguard its economic development in a gloomy global economy, outbound tourism demand could be further reduced. It is likely that the global economy will step into a historical recession. If this is the case in the coming years, the recovery of China’s outbound tourism could be further slowed down.

Second, the COVID-19 pandemic will change the travel safety perceptions and overall risk evaluation of future leisure travels so that different travel markets may adjust their travel behaviors accordingly. Before the pandemic, in a relatively safe global travel environment, Chinese seniors were a significant travel market given their disposable income and free time. During the after the pandemic, senior travelers, especially those with health conditions and concerns, may be more deterred by the elevated risk level associated with travel. They may avoid long-haul international travel and prefer short-distance domestic holidays. On the contrary, the health risk effect of COVID-19 on millennials’ travel and holiday decisions may be different to the senior group.

Third, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the pace of innovation and technological applications in China’s tourism industry. This is a noteworthy trend. During the pandemic, tourism enterprises tried to explore new business models with new technologies as proactive response actions and strategies. These technologies include live streaming (Xie et al., 2022), Artificial intelligence (AI) applications (M. Li et al., 2022), service robots, virtual reality or augmented reality applications, and food delivery by drones (Zhao & Bacao, 2020).

Introducing the special issue

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a new context for tourism research. Tourism research conducted after 2020 is not able to completely insulate from this context. Industry experiences in coping with the pandemic can be summarized for practical knowledge to guide the industry’s further development and recovery. In this special issue, we include six articles which examined the COVID-related issues in the greater China region. Gu, Li, Ryan, Tang, and Yang reviewed the recovery strategies and organizational resilience measures undertaken by China’s major hotel industry operators. In the different stages of the pandemic, hotels in China faced different challenges and applied various strategies in dealing with the negative impacts of the pandemic on their business operations. It should be noted that the support of external stakeholders, including government agencies, industry associations, media and online travel agencies, has played a significant role in the hotel industry recovery.

During the pandemic, China implemented a health pass QR code system to monitor people flow and individuals’ health state and conditions. In practice, this system was proved to be effective. Zheng, Liu, and Lu tested people’s perceptions of such a pandemic information control and regulation system and found that travelers’ trust in health QR codes would increase their travel confidence, which further increases their travel intentions during the pandemic. The pandemic would elicit different types of emotional responses; Adam, Agyeiwaah, and Dayour studied Macau residents’ emotional responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and segmented these respondents based on their emotional responses. Different emotional segments exhibited different levels of perceived risk and accordingly generated different travel intentions after the pandemic.

Tourism businesses practiced different response strategies toward the pandemic (Huang & Wang, 2023). Lin, Wong, and Lin examined the immediate, just-in-time corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives as demonstrated by casinos in Macau. They found that these initiatives can be classified into the following themes: safeguarding personnel and guests, giving encouragement to society, engaging in financial charities, and promoting safety and quality of life, and so on. Similar CSR initiatives were also identified by Gu et al. from the hotel operators in mainland China.

One of the critical issues brought by the COVID-19 pandemic to the tourism industry lies in the change of career attitudes and intention held by tourism students (Huang & Wang, 2023). Huang and Wang noted that more research is needed to understand the impact of COVID-19 on tourism students’ career attitudes and intention. In this special issue collection, Li and Zhang examined the influence of COVID-19 on vocational hospitality and tourism students’ career choices. The study indicated that the COVID-19 pandemic has changed students’ attitudes toward working and pursuing a career in the hospitality and tourism industry, thus echoing the findings of Birtch et al. (2021). Nonetheless, Huang and Wang’s concern remains also valid in China.

Some of the tourism-related industries have suffered more from the influence of the pandemic. Huang et al. (2021) study identified that tourists’ preference of cruise tourism dropped significantly due to the influence of the COVID-19 outbreak. As such, there is a need to re-evaluate Chinese cruise travelers’ motivations and preferences during the pandemic. Chu and Tung’s study examined this issue and found that the shore activities are more important than cabin price and trip duration. Furthermore, Chinese cruise travelers prefer sightseeing shore excursion, followed by visiting natural scenery. These findings provide tailored implications for the recovery of cruise tourism targeting Chinese tourists.

Concluding remarks

This editorial essay briefly discusses the current state of China’s COVID-19 situation and its current and future influence on China’s tourism development. We emphasize that COVID-19 will continue in the short or intermediate term to significantly influence China’s tourism, being an indispensable external environment factor to reshape China’s domestic, inbound, and outbound tourism. In addition, COVID-19 will change the perceptions and tourism preferences of different types of travel markets, and create a new industry landscape by accelerating the speed of industry innovation and technological applications. We hope this special issue brings more research attention and effort to emerging industry practices and research issues pertaining to China’s tourism in the COVID-19 context.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Songshan (Sam) Huang

Songshan (Sam) Huang is a Professor in tourism and services marketing in the School of Business and Law, Edith Cowan University, Australia. His research interests include Chinese tourist behaviours, destination marketing, tour guiding and various aspects of China tourism issues (E-mail: [email protected]).

Jigang Bao

Jigang Bao is a Professor and the Founding Dean (2004–2018) of the School of Tourism Management, Sun Yat-sen University, China. His research interests include sustainable tourism development, theme parks, tourism planning, and poverty alleviation through tourism (E-mail: [email protected]).

Xin (Cathy) Jin

Xin (Cathy) Jin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Tourism, Sport and Hotel Management, Griffith University, Australia. Her research interests include Chinese outbound tourism, event tourism and special interest tourism (E-mail: [email protected]).

Jie Wang

Jie Wang is a Senior Lecturer in Business School at the University of Queensland, Australia. Her research interests are associated with risk reduction, crisis management and disaster resilience in tourism and hospitality (E-mail: [email protected]).