Waiting for the New Year rush

Dear reader,

in China the travel period connected to the start of the Wood Dragon Year has commenced with positive reports at least for the domestic travel. It can be expected that despite the ongoing economic problems China’s outbound tourism will also jump to the next level of recovery.

The economic outlook is indeed not very good, with the Hong Kong court decision to shut down Evergrande at least outside of Mainland China and the weak import and export statistics as the latest indicators. Politically the fight between those putting political issues on top, including restricting video gaming, and those concentrating on the negative economic impacts of policies, cancelling the restrictions on video gaming again and firing the guy officially responsible for them, is still going on.

Nevertheless, the rich Chinese can still afford international travel, while the middle class will be more cautious how much they spend on their next trip to Vietnam or South Korea, maybe opting for the Harbin Ice Festival instead.

Tourism in any case is seen as a positive economic force, with Ireland and Switzerland following five other European countries plus Malaysia to enjoy visa-free entry into China. Thai nationals can also enter China without a visa from March, joining the Singaporeans who already enjoy this privilege now.

It is therefore timely that the new online training programs CTT China Tourism Training have been published by COTRI in a new form of more than 60 self-administered sessions, each 20 minutes long and available in many different languages, thanks to AI.

This week’s edition of COTRI INTELLIGENCE includes as usual next to the text “China this week” you are just reading, the COTRI weekly Editorial talking about the name change of UNWTO, now UN Tourism, the News and the COTRI News about the CTT trainings in the free content part. For the Topic of the Week (Travellers intentions), the Deep Dive consulting (Demographic challenge) and the Facts and Views we invite you to consider a Premium or Premium Plus subscription and offer a special welcoming subscription for one month, celebrating the upcoming Year of the Wood Dragon, with a 59% discount here: https://cotri-intelligence.ghost.io/welcoming-offer.

As usual, all best wishes to our readers from Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Georg Arlt and the entire COTRI INTELLIGENCE team!