The missing travellers - Welcome back to a new year of anxiety

Dear reader,

UN Tourism, formerly known as UNWTO, announced that international tourism is back on track with 99% of the number of international trips in 2019 reached again in 2024. This is on the one hand a rather old-fashioned look through the quantitative growth glasses, on the other hand it shows that the 60 million Chinese international trips (4% of global travel) which were done less in 2024 than in 2019 can be blamed for missing a result above the 2019 level. No wonder that Heinemann, one of the biggest Duty Free companies in the world, based in Hamburg/Germany, decided to put all investment into the Chinese outbound tourism source market on hold for at least 18 months after lower revenue from Chinese travellers worldwide.

COTRI Weekly Editorial is back after a four-week break, which fortunately did not stop the increase in the number of subscribers, even though no editorials were published. Thank you!

Your humble editor used the time for another visit to China, the third in four months, one of the many perks of living in Kathmandu, only a few hours flight away. In Guangzhou we discussed further the GITF Guangzhou International Travel Fair 2025, which in May will be more interactive and more focussed on South China than ever before, with the accompanying conference organised by COTRI offering a core of high-level keynotes and several topical satellites. May 14-16 should be marked in your calendar!

In Haikou your humble editor had the honour to be one of the six keynote speakers at the 4th Critical Tourism Studies Asia Pacific Conference in the new campus of the Hainan University, featuring renowned experts like Prof. Taylor Zheng, Prof. Xu Honggang, Prof. Yana Wengel, Prof. Chris Ryan, Prof. Winston Chow and Prof. Heike Sch?nzel, to name just a few.

Visiting Beijing, Haikou, Guangzhou and Shenzhen in the last few months deepened the impression that one can find positive and negative signs of development at the same time: The pedestrian areas of Guangzhou were bustling in the evening with people already in CNY mood, while at the same time the Shopping Malls were empty, with many shops replaced by small restaurants or boarded up. Some contacts whispered to be careful in what one was saying as there were microphones everywhere. At the same time Chairman Xi spoke highly of peace during his New Years address while his two most powerful colleagues in Washington and Moscow either already started attacks on souverain countries or are openly threaten to do so. The Urban Youth unemployment rates go down, but only because the way of calculation has been changed.

The Great Buddha Temple (DaFoSi) in Guangzhou is a good example as well. Destroyed in the Cultural Revolution, it is now a big new temple with lots of gold and jade employed, but with art of very questionable quality and a lack of spiritual atmosphere. At the same time, it has been dwarfed in recent years by new skyscrapers build close by.

In a nutshell, it is as always: Any predictions about China’s future have to be taken with more than a pinch of salt. Have we witnessed China Peak in 2018 or is the best still to come? Anything can happen, and do not forget the old wisdom: Be careful what you wish for.

COTRI however is looking forward optimistically to a year of further recovery. The new website will be officially opened on February 5th, the first working day after CNY. On the same day the CTW Chinese Tourist Welcome Award 2025 will be started with the invitation of applications for the 21st edition since it started in 2004.

Your humble editor has already reached Platinum status with Trip.com and with all the travel ahead, might even climb up to Platinum Plus soon. At the end of the flights will be public appearances and hopefully joyful meetings with some of the readers of COTRI Weekly Editorial. Coming up is the ICAPTH conference in Salalah/Oman organised by the University of Technology and Applied Sciences in mid-February, followed by the NICE Nepal India China Expo fair and conference in Pokhara/Nepal (domestic flight needed only), followed further by the ITB Berlin in early March (WTCF China Panel on March 4) and the COW Colors of the World Expo and Conference in Istanbul April 18-20, with the PATA Annual Meeting directly behind in the same location April 21-23. As mentioned above, the GITF in Guangzhou in May 14-16 will then not only see a new form of conference but also the CTW Award 2025 ceremony.

The next COTRI Weekly Editorial will be published on the first day of the New Year of the Wood Snake and will accordingly look at China’s outbound tourism in the old and the new year.

If you are celebrating the lunisolar (no, no, no, it is not Lunar New Year!) start of a new area, all good wishes for peace and prosperity to you and your loved ones.

As always, all best wishes from Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Georg Arlt and the whole COTRI INTELLIGENCE team!