Chinese tourists pose for photos at the Grand Palace scenic spot in Bangkok, Thailand, Feb. 7, 2022. Three years after the pandemic, the first tour groups from China arrived Monday in the Thai capital of Bangkok, greeted by flowers and a warm welcome from the Southeast Asian country betting on tourists' return to boost the recovery of its vital tourism sector. (Xinhua/Wang Teng)

China's outbound travel market is expected to further pick up during the upcoming eight-day holidays for China's National Day Holiday and the Mid-Autumn Festival, which will fall from September 29 to October 6. Amid an expected tourism boom, Japan has fallen out of the top destinations after the country's Fukushima water dumping led to rising concerns. 

Searches for outbound flights for the holidays have recovered to nearly 100 percent compared with the same period in 2019. The top destinations include Thailand, South Korea, the US, the UK and Australia on Ctrip, a major online travel agency, the company told the Global Times on Tuesday in a statement. 

Searches for overseas hotels increased by nearly 20 percent compared with 2019, while Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and UK led the list. 

Japan was the top search destination in August for Chinese tourists, after China announced the third round of resumption of outbound group tour services to 78 countries and regions on August 10, which included Japan. 

For instance, searches for Japan from August 10 to 17 jumped to first place for major Chinese travel agencies, and bookings for the National Day Holiday to Japan at that time surged more than five times month-on-month, jiemian.com reported. 

"I planned to take my family with me to Japan for the National Day Holiday before Japan dumped the nuclear-contaminated water into the ocean, but now I decided to switch to other countries amid rising concerns," a retired woman surnamed Yin based in Southwest China's Chongqing told the Global Times on Tuesday, adding that Japan is not an irreplaceable destination for her family vacation. 

Jia Jianqiang, CEO of Beijing-based online agency 6renyou, told the Global Times on Tuesday that the company's general business volume of tourism products in Japan fell about 50-60 percent recently. 

"Some of our clients are concerned about the potential health risks caused by Japan's dumping of nuclear-contaminated water, and canceled their scheduled trips to Japan," said Jia.

Chinese consumers are more careful about their overseas destinations after the pandemic, as they take multiple factors into consideration such as political and environmental factors, Zhang Yi, CEO of iiMedia Research Institute, told the Global Times on Tuesday. 

Zhang added that Japan used to be a highly popular destination for Chinese consumers, and the slump of the search volume already reflects their worries. 

In the first half of 2023, Japan ranked second among the top overseas destinations for tourists from the Chinese mainland after Thailand, receiving 12.05 percent of the total outbound travelers from the Chinese mainland, according to a report from the China Tourism Academy.

Consumers from the Chinese mainland spent 1.77 trillion Japanese yen ($12.06 billion) in Japan in 2019, ranking first and accounting for 36.8 percent of the total consumption by foreign visitors that year, per the report from jiemian.com.