This article was published in the Bloomberg Weekend Edition (© 2025 Bloomberg L.P.) on January 8th, 2025. Written by By Jinshan Hong, Josh Xiao, K Oanh Ha, and Danny Lee, with assistance from Spe Chen, Adrian Leung, and Jane Pong. Guy Rubin, founder of Imperial Tours, was a source used for this article.

The billions of dollars in spending that an unprecedented lifting of visa requirements could have brought simply hasn’t materialized.

China took the unprecedented step of easing visa requirements for scores of countries in 2024, now throwing open its doors to 1.9 billion would-be visitors. Only a fraction of the hoped-for tourists have come.

The influx of foreign tourists and the billions of dollars in spending they could have brought simply hasn’t materialized, a Bloomberg analysis shows. Visitors from the US and most of Western Europe — where political and trade spats with Beijing abound — stayed away. Instead, tourists from nearby Asian countries and less-developed markets came calling.

Foreign visitor entries to China totaled just under 23 million in the first three quarters of the year, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of the most recently available government data. While that’s roughly double 2023’s low base, it’s still only 63% of 2019’s same-period level and well short of the near full recovery Beijing would have been hoping for as it slashed red tape.

Italian tourists pose for a group photo after practicing tai chi at the Temple of Heaven Park in Beijing in July 2024. Photographer: Ju Huanzong/Xinhua/Getty Images

The reasons are manifold; far fewer international flights from overseas airlines, changing economic and political ties and a deteriorating perception in the West of China. For Beijing, the ramifications will limit its ability to prop up a sluggish economy and facilitate investment. It’s also a failed opportunity to project a better image abroad before tensions flare again as President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House.

“China’s overall attractiveness as a tourist destination, and as a business destination, has been damaged because of Covid, Beijing’s policies and geopolitics,” Bloomberg Intelligence senior aviation analyst Tim Bacchus said. “The visa-free policy helps on the margins but it’s not making up for the fact that people are pivoting away from China.”

The precipitous drop in foreign visitors after the pandemic prompted China to unfurl the welcome mat in its biggest-ever tourism push. In the two years to the day since China re-opened its borders, Beijing has unilaterally relaxed visa policies to an ever-widening number of countries, despite its historical preference for reciprocal visa-free access.

China has now unilaterally extended visa-free entry to citizens of 38 countries. Before the pandemic, going to China sans paperwork was only allowed unilaterally for those from Singapore, Japan and Brunei. Beijing has also broadened a policy of offering visa-free entry for transit travelers who plan visits of 10 days or less. That currently applies to 54 nations.

“The fact they’re providing visa waivers to some countries’ citizens without reciprocity shows some level of desperation,” Bacchus said.

China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism didn’t respond to a request for comment.

With a looming US trade war threatening Chinese exports, luring back foreign spenders is a critical pillar of President Xi Jinping’s grand plan to revitalize the world’s No. 2 economy. Beijing is battling its longest deflationary streak since 1999 as domestic brands are mired in price wars and Chinese consumers clock one of the world’s highest household savings rates.

Majority of China’s Visa-Free Perks Go to European Nations

Failure to convince Western travelers that China is a worthwhile holiday destination also risks deepening an isolation Beijing began when it closed its borders for three years during the pandemic. Since then, a series of trade spats have erupted between China and many Western democracies, with those hostilities now being reflected in a near decoupling of tourism ties between the Asian nation and the US and its allies.

Worryingly, the tourists China is attracting with its visa-free policies aren’t the big spending ones. At their peak in 2019, international visitors poured $132 billion into China, research by the World Travel & Tourism Council in partnership with Oxford Economics show. The organization estimates foreigners only opened their wallets to the tune of $98 billion in 2024, a 26% drop.

Guy Rubin, who founded Imperial Tours with his wife Nancy Kim in 1999, said his American clients now make up just under 40% of business compared with about 90% before Covid. Imperial Tours offers luxury travel throughout China, billing itself as a way to explore the nation’s heritage and high-end restaurants and hotels in style.

“Americans are generally scared of China,” said Rubin. “People individually say they’re not affected by geopolitics but we see very clearly the degree to which that’s untrue.” From dealing exclusively in China travel, Imperial Tours has had to add South Korea to the mix.

Photographers at the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in Hunan Province on Jan. 5.Photographer: Deng Daoli/VCG/Getty Images

Rubin also said many Americans find the visa process “really tiresome.” “Our US travelers are taking advantage of the transit visa waiver programs, but we have to spend a fair amount of time explaining how they work.” Instead, healthier demand is coming from countries with better trade flows with China, like the Middle East, he said.

Even the people who are being drawn to China — of the almost 23 million foreign arrivals in the first nine months of last year, only a little over half, or 13 million, entered visa free — have initial reservations.
Alexandre Vadot, a finance analyst based in Tokyo, was one of them. The 28-year-old Frenchman traveled to Shanghai for a week in March in his first-ever trip and followed that up with another visit to Beijing in September.

While China was a lot more advanced than he thought, some things rankled, like people cutting queues. “When you’re born and raised in France or Europe, you have a not favorable image of China” based on media coverage, Vadot said.

At a national level, China doesn’t break down its tourist arrivals by country, but a Bloomberg Intelligence analysis of data from flight and ticketing analytics firm ForwardKeys, shows it’s people from China’s closest neighbors taking the most advantage. Round-trip bookings to China from Malaysia surged 69% in 2024 versus 2019, while those from Thailand increased 30%.

A staff member assists foreign travelers at Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport in August 2024. Foreign visitor entries to China totaled just under 23 million in the first three quarters of the year.Photographer: VCG/Getty Images

And despite most visa-free perks going to rich European nations, it hasn’t brought a crush of visitors. Round-trip bookings from both Germany and France plunged 38% while Italy sank 29%.

Xi is acutely aware of the benefits that having visitors witness the real China — one that is largely safe, cosmopolitan and rich in history — for themselves can bring. Speaking in San Francisco in November 2023 during a low point in China-US relations, Xi said that the more difficulties there are in the world, the “greater the need for us to forge a closer bond between our peoples and to open our hearts to each other.”

A closer look into tourist arrivals in Beijing, which does break down data by some nationalities, hints at what’s likely being reflected across the country. Around 10% of foreigner entries to China make a tourist stop in its capital city.

Similar to the round-trip flights booking data, it shows an influx of visitors from Malaysia and Vietnam, as well as Russia, probably as Russians find other destinations off limits due to sanctions. Canadians, the Swiss and the Germans are steering clear.

Tourist Origin and Percentage Change (2019 to 2024)

Source: Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism, Bloomberg
Note: Figures are adjusted by Bloomberg to account for a methodology change with the official data in June 2024. Both 2024 and 2019 data are from January to November.

One practical reality that’s limiting visitors is a dearth of flights, at least from international airlines. In 2024, international flights to and from China returned to 74% of 2019 capacity, according to data from aviation analytics firm Cirium. Among these cross-border connections with China, foreign carriers have resumed only 58% of their pre-Covid capacity, overshadowed by an 88% recovery rate by Chinese carriers.

European carriers can’t use Russian airspace and apart from taking a lot longer, flying around Russia incurs significantly higher fuel costs. Many have slashed their China schedules because that, combined with the lack of demand, makes the routes unprofitable. The airspace restrictions don’t apply to Chinese carriers, which have quickly filled the gaps left by exiting foreign airlines.

Even trips that don’t use Russian airspace aren’t particularly viable due to people’s limited interest in going there. Japan Airlines Co. Chief Financial Officer Yuji Saito said inbound travel to China is still only about 40% of pre-pandemic levels. “We think that will continue,” he said, describing it as the “new normal.”

Other airlines that have operated for decades in China have exited outright. Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd. pulled out in July while Lufthansa, Scandinavian Airlines, Qantas Airways Ltd. and British Airways have also canceled routes as they became financially unsustainable.

“The market just isn’t there,” Cebu Pacific Chief Executive Officer Mike Szucs said. The Philippine airline has also dramatically cut back flights.

Shifting economic ties are a big reason behind the subdued demand. Western companies have been hesitant to ramp up investments in China due to growing regulatory complexity and geopolitical tensions, and that’s hampering travel too. Business travel bookings to China were just 52% of 2019 levels versus leisure bookings’ 79% recovery last year, the analysis of ForwardKeys data shows, and people who are traveling for work aren’t staying on to enjoy what else China offers.

Savanti Travel, a company specializing in business bookings, used to organize a lot of trips into China for international executives.

“Now, those meetings are in Tokyo or Seoul and they’re headed to other parts of Japan or Bali after their work trip,” founder Leigh Rowan, who used to run popular website The Points Guy, said. “It’s fundamentally changed.”

Around the world, people’s views of China have evolved, with fewer citizens from developed nations likely to hold positive views of the country’s economic impact and military prowess, according to a Pew Research Center survey.

Tourists from Japan, for example, are wary after a spate of attacks on Japanese citizens while those from the US and Canada, where anti-China sentiment has deepened, have noticeably stayed away. Washington and Beijing remain locked over a range of hot-button issues like Taiwan and the South China Sea, which is undermining business confidence and putting a lid on grassroots exchanges.

Airline logistics and geopolitics aside, China still remains a daunting place for many. English isn’t widely used even in hubs like Shanghai and Beijing, and the nation has its own mobile payments system that discourages cash and can be tricky to figure out without learning Mandarin. The internet is also heavily censored so sites like Google or Instagram can’t be accessed.

Claire Thum, a 27-year-old interior designer from Singapore, started to notice more social media videos featuring diverse landscapes and life in China. But despite a largely favorable impression of China in the small island nation, she’s held off from a trip, intimidated by the technology complications and language barrier.

“There are still a lot of hurdles to jump over.”