Residents visit the Qingdao Wine Museum in Qingdao, East China's Shandong Province. With a constant temperature of 20 C, the museum has become a place to cool off the summer heat. Photo: VCG

Summer tourism has bounced back in China as prominent scenic spots reopen, most provinces allow inter-provincial travel, and many areas and attractions offer free tickets. Industry analysts expect this year's summer tourism season to be better than last year, as the improved epidemic prevention and control situation is providing much-needed confidence.

As a sign of the accelerated tourism recovery, the Universal Beijing Resort has reopened with limited capacity. Tickets can be booked within a 30-day period, and all guests are required to provide a 48-hour negative nucleic acid test result, and show their health code and reservation code, an employee from the resort told the Global Times on Sunday.

Universal Beijing Resort Photo: Li Hao/GT

The resort resumed operations on Saturday after a suspension of nearly two months and was top among all searches for theme parks across the country on domestic online travel platform Qunar.

Also in Beijing, hotel bookings on Saturday for Gubei Water Town - located near the Simatai Great Wall - were back to more than 80 percent, offering another sign that people are willing to spend on tourism for the summer holiday, Xu Xiaolei, marketing manager at China's CYTS Tours Holding Co, which operates the scenic spot, told the Global Times on Sunday.

Aerial photo taken on April 23, 2020 shows a night view of the Gubei Water Town in Beijing, capital of China. (Xinhua/Zhang Chenlin)

"It is expected that this year's summer tourism market will be better than the first half of the year and the same period of last year, as gratifying progress has been made in epidemic prevention and control," Xu said.

As the COVID-19 situation eases, a number of places including Northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Central China's Hubei Province and Northwest China's Qinghai eased restrictions on cross-provincial travel from late June, domestic news outlet The Paper reported.

Data from Chinese online travel platform Trip.com showed that in the week ended on June 21, the number of cross-provincial group tour bookings rose 291 percent from the previous week, and cross-provincial hotel bookings were up 151 percent on a weekly basis.

To encourage summer tourism, nearly 500 scenic spots across China have announced free tickets or discounts for special groups, such as students and medical workers, in a bid to revive tourism, after COVID-19 flare-ups in many Chinese cities were contained, according to Trip.com.

Some scenic spots in Zhangjiajie, Central China's Hunan Province, better known as the mountains in Avatar, are open to students free of charge until August 31, according to the local tourism bureau.

Data from Trip.com showed that 4,000 free tickets for the Zhangjiajie National Park in June were booked, up 667 percent from May.

The municipal government of Qingdao in East China's Shandong Province said that tickets for 11 A-level scenic spots in the city - with total admission fees of 590 yuan ($87.73) - will be waived for tourists from July 1 to December 31.

"The current recovery of tourism is proceeding at a good pace," Xu said.

The improved tourism situation comes amid a steady decline of COVID-19 infections nationwide in June. Shanghai declared victory over the virus on Saturday, while Beijing will allow primary and secondary school students to resume in-person classes from Monday.

In June, China's epidemic prevention yielded fruitful results, putting the economy on a fast track of recovery, which is expected to lead to explosive growth during the summer vacation for China's tourism industry, experts said.

People pose for photos in a blooming sunflower field in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, June 15, 2022. A total of four hectares of sunflowers bloom in Hangzhou, attracting many visitors. (Photo: China News Service/Zhang Yin)

Chen Jia, a research fellow at the International Monetary Institute of the Renmin University of China, told the Global Times on Sunday that the improved summer tourism consumption comes as a rebound from the May Day holiday tourism, which was hit by the epidemic as well as efforts by local governments to expand tourism resources on the basis of epidemic prevention and control.

"If this trend continues, we can hope that overall tourism growth this year will match or even slightly surpass last year's level," Chen noted.

Data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed that the added value of tourism and related industries accounted for 4.01 percent of China's GDP in 2020. 

Urban residents' tourism consumption reached 2.36 trillion yuan in 2021, up 31.6 percent over 2020, data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism showed.

"If the momentum is sustained this year, it will play a key role in driving up consumption this year," Chen said.