With the warming of spring temperatures and the favorable policies of visa free and batch resumption of flights, the outbound tourism market is gradually heating up.
On March 20th, Airbnb Airbnb released spring outbound travel trend data, which showed that the search heat for outbound travel during this year's Qingming Festival has exceeded the same period in 2023 by 2.5 times, with the search heat for destinations in the Asia Pacific region increasing by 3.5 times year-on-year.
Kong Zhiqiu, the head of Airbnb's China business, said, "Since the beginning of this year, the Chinese outbound tourism market has continued to stabilize and recover, showing an accelerating trend of recovery. During the Spring Festival, Airbnb's Chinese user outbound tourism pre orders have increased by more than 7 times year-on-year."
Japan, New Zealand, the United States, Italy, France, South Korea, Thailand, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Spain are the top ten destinations for spring outbound tourism according to the company's statistics. From the overall trend, the geothermal intensity of Asia Pacific destinations is not decreasing, and long-term flight destinations are also continuing to heat up.
The niche cities around popular destinations are quite popular among tourists. More than half of Airbnb's users searched for nearby destinations such as Kyoto while searching for properties in Osaka, Japan. The geothermal energy of destinations such as Hakone, Fuji Kawaguchi Lake, and Takamatsu has surged by more than 20 times year-on-year.
Zhang Chao, the marketing manager of Airbnb, specifically mentioned that the demand for outbound travel among young people is on the rise.
This year's Qingming Festival holiday, the growth rate of search volume for Generation Z travelers aged 18 to 24 on the Airbnb platform has exceeded the overall trend. Among them, the search popularity of Generation Z users for spring travel in Japan exceeded 7 times year-on-year.
Kong Zhiqiu said that in China and even the Asia Pacific region, the number and density of young people are the highest in the world, which also means that Generation Z will definitely be the growth engine for Airbnb's business in China in the future.
According to He Changhua, the head of growth at Airbnb China, Chinese users have a great demand for landlords who can communicate smoothly in Chinese. In a foreign land, communicating directly in Chinese can help users establish a strong sense of security and make them feel particularly friendly. In destinations frequently visited by Chinese people such as Japan, Thailand, South Korea, and Malaysia, nearly half of the bookings are concentrated on the listings of Chinese landlords.
"These destinations are also the key focus of Airbnb China, and the team will cooperate with some third-party housing management platforms to attract more Chinese speaking landlords to settle in." He Changhua said.
In May 2022, due to the impact of the epidemic, Airbnb announced the suspension of support for domestic tourism listings, experiences, and related bookings in China. All of its accumulated domestic listings over the past six years will be relocated to homestay platforms such as Tujia, Meituan, and Xiaozhu. Airbnb's China business will fully shift to outbound tourism.
In the past year, it has been a revival year for the company's Chinese business, and it is believed that this trend will continue in 2024.
"By the end of 2024, Airbnb's outbound tourism business in China is expected to surpass the same period in 2019," Kong Zhiqiu predicted. The company hopes that China will not only be an important growth engine for its Asia Pacific business, but also drive the growth of its global business.
He told Interface News that the pre order volume for Chinese outbound travel to Thailand, Malaysia, and some European destinations on the platform has exceeded the level of the same period in 2019. Users generally pay more attention to cost-effectiveness, but are not blindly pursuing low prices. Instead, they hope to have more cost-effective prices while ensuring quality does not decrease, so as to "get more value for money".
According to the recent financial report released by Airbnb, the total number of accommodation and experience bookings on the platform reached 99 million in the fourth quarter of last year, a year-on-year increase of 12%, setting a new record high for the same period in history. Specifically in the Asia Pacific region, the pre order volume for accommodation and experience increased by 22% year-on-year, and the total cross-border travel volume increased by nearly 30% year-on-year. Driven by the recovery of cross-border tourism in China, the number of room nights booked by Chinese outbound tourism users has increased by nearly 90% year-on-year.
The sustained recovery of China's outbound tourism market has also driven the performance growth of other tourism enterprises. According to Ctrip data, since March, the platform's tourism orders for Japan in March and April have increased by 360% compared to the same period in February; The rental car orders in the Netherlands from March to April increased by 80% year-on-year, with an average rental period of 6.6 days and an average order price of 1571 yuan.
Ctrip's outbound hotel and flight bookings for the fourth quarter of last year have recovered to over 80% of the same period in 2019, and the international hotel room night volume for same journey travel in that quarter has also fully recovered to the same period in 2019.
The latest data released by the China Tourism Research Institute also shows that the number of outbound tourists exceeded 87 million in 2023, and it is predicted that this number will be 130 million in 2024.
While outbound tourism is recovering, inbound tourism is also warming up. According to the calculation of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of China, there are about 6.83 million inbound and outbound tourists in China during the 8-day Spring Festival holiday, of which about 3.23 million are inbound tourists, approaching the level of the same period in 2019.
Domestic tourism practitioners are eager to try China's inbound tourism, and some tourism companies are also starting to layout their inbound tourism. Kong Zhiqiu did not directly respond to the question of whether Airbnb will resume its domestic tourism business in China, but expressed "full expectations".