Even if a vaccine certificate was not required , Chinese people themselves were worried because of the lower efficacy of their doses . Also , airlines need much longer time to rebound when compared to hotels due to the mandatory training for cockpit and cabin crews . Lastly , flights were exorbitantly expensive .
Thailand did , however , manage to receive 150,000 visitors from China in February 2023 , but as large as this number seems , it is still 85 % lower than 2019 numbers . Japan and Korea fared even worse as they barely managed just 5 % of 2019 volumes .
Improvements are being made as the number of daily outbound flights has increased from 200 in November 2022 to 800 by the beginning of May 2023 . For comparison purposes , these numbers were just a hair under 3,000 flights a day heading out of China in 2019 . Clearly , the numbers are still way off .
GETTING HEALTHIER What does all this mean for the hotel industry performance in mainland China ?
To fully understand this is to look at a metric that covers total performance : TRevPAR , or total revenue per available room , which encompasses all revenue — rooms and ancillary — generated by a hotel . The data for this insight is provided by HotStats , which collects full profit-and-loss data from almost 11,000 hotels globally .
Tokyo looks like the clear leader , but that ’ s mainly due to higher average rates , which the market has traditionally demanded . Singapore was running second with very respectable and constantly growing numbers and , in a close third , Hong Kong also seemed to be doing fine ; however , it ’ s a bit of an illusion as its numbers fall far behind what is deemed normal .
At the same time , both Shanghai and Beijing , whose performance is accepted as a clear indication of the entire country , were running at an average of $ 50 USD less than a fifth of what Singapore , Hong Kong and Tokyo managed . The reason is a series of ultra-strict lockdowns that virtually paralyzed the nation . Some would argue that these measures worked as the caseloads remained low . July and August saw TRevPAR figures rising to over double what was done earlier in the year .
This seemingly magical and instant resurgence had been a hallmark of China ’ s hotel industry performance for the past three years . Once restrictions ease , people leave their homes and go to hotels . But then , come October and November , another round of lockdowns came along , which were especially hard on Beijing hotels and numbers crumbled again . This time to less than a tenth of what Tokyo managed in the same period .
On a more optimistic note , we need to look at the performance of these two key Chinese cities in Q1 2023 . The growth is immense and stable hitting TRevPAR of $ 140 USD , almost tripling from just 10 months previous . Growth will continue its gradual climb up as international confidence and seat capacities return on flights , both in and out of the country .
The dragon has awoken . Now let ’ s see how it does for the rest of 2023 and beyond . The eyes of the world are on it .
ASIA TREVPAR APR 2022 TO MAR 2023
600
500
400
300
200
100
0 Abr-22 May-22 Jun-22 Jul-22 Aug-22 Sep-22 Oct-22 Nov22 Dec-22 Jan-23 Feb-23 Mar-23
Shanghai |
Singapore |
Bangkok |
Beijing |
Tokyo |
Hong Kong |
Jakarta |
Manila |
Source : HotStats
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