China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism recently released a notice announcing the third group of approved outbound group tours, with Japan being one of the most popular tourist destinations. However, following the commencement of Japan’s dumping of contaminated water, cancellations of tours to the country have already begun, local media reported on Sunday.
According to one of China’s largest online travel agencies Ctrip, they had launched over 5,000 outbound group tour packages, flights, and hotel bundles, covering more than one-third of the countries and regions across the third group of approved countries, including 78 countries such as the US, the UK, Japan and Turkey.
However, everything changed when Japan started to dump nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the sea.
The First Financial Journal reported on Saturday that although Japanese tourism products are still being sold on online travel platforms such as Ctrip, Tongcheng, Tuniu, and Lümama, they are not being prominently displayed.
At the same time, tourism industry insiders revealed that some travelers have already started to cancel their trips. Several travel agencies have reported similar situations. In view of the current escalation of the dumping plan, many tourism companies have stated that they will make adjustments in their upcoming marketing plans, especially in promoting travel packages for the upcoming National Day holidays. Many reportedy plan to temporarily reduce the promotion of Japanese tours or suspend related marketing plans for travels to Japan.
Currently, Ctrip’s platform has a total of over 80,000 outbound group tours and flight and hotel packages available for purchase.
It is reported that after the notice was released, a 12-day group tour product from Shanghai to Morocco departing on September 26, which was launched by Ctrip on the same day, sold out only three days later. The first group tour from Shanghai to Japan on September 20 has also been almost sold out.
According to Ctrip’s group tour search traffic, search enquiries for Japan surpassed that of Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand and Singapore, making it the top outbound travel destination. The search popularity for Turkey and Australia has also increased by about 50 percent.
Data of the platform also shows that the booking volume for Japan group tour products in the previous week increased by nearly 90 percent compared to the same period last month, and the booking volume for Japan group tour products departing during the National Day holidays has increased by over fivefold.
For example, travel platform Lümama is currently promoting packages to Germany, the UK, and other destinations in Northern Europe over those to Japan .
Observers believe that Japan, which was already included in the third group of outbound group tours list, was expected to benefit from a lift in tourism activity during the Chinese National Day holidays. However, following safety concerns caused by Japan’s dumping of nuclear wastewater into the sea, Chinese tourists’ enthusiasm to travel to Japan during the National Day holidays has significantly decreased. If Chinese tourists “vote with their feet,” the overall tourism economy in Japan may shrink for a considerable period of time due to a sustained decrease in the number of Chinese tourists.
(Global Times)
