Travelers depart from the Beijing Capital International Airport on April 26, 2023 ahead of the May Day holidays. The airport will welcome or see off an average 166,000 passenger trips a day during the holidays. Photo: Li Hao/GT

The upcoming eight-day Golden Week holiday is expected to spark the biggest boom for Chinese outbound tourism since the pandemic, travel agencies said, and travel to Southeast Asia, boosted by Thailand's loosened travel policies for Chinese residents, could also maintain an upward trend.

On Monday, Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin personally greeted the first batch of visitors to arrive in Thailand, after it waived visas for Chinese tourists, Reuters reported, as the country implemented a five-month visa-free policy for Chinese tourists starting from the same day. 

The policy is welcomed by Chinese travelers, and a representative from Spring Tours said that its travel packages for Thailand from September 28 to October 1 are almost sold out, with only a few remaining spots available for the second half of the holidays.

Online travel agency Trip.com said that searches related to Thailand have surged by 800 percent on its platform since Thailand announced its visa-free entry policy.

It is expected that during the Golden Week holidays and through the fourth quarter, there will be more Chinese tourists traveling to Thailand, making it a popular destination, Trip.com told the Global Times on Monday.

China's travel market is about to get another boost as the Golden Week holidays arrive, which encompass both the Mid-Autumn Festival and the National Day break, lasting eight days from September 29 to October 6.

Trip.com said the outbound tourism market has experienced a surge in the growth for the Golden Week holiday period, with bookings up nearly 20 times compared with last year. Popular destinations include Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and the UK.

UTour Group said it expects the number of outbound tourists during the Golden Week holiday to set a new record and surge 500 percent compared with the May Day holidays this year.

It is anticipated that the outbound tourism market during the coming holidays will surpass the level of 2019, Xu Xiaolei, a marketing manager at China's CYTS Tours Holding Co, told the Global Times on Monday.

The boom in outbound tourism has also caused a surge in airfares. As of September 18, the number of bookings for both inbound and outbound flights reached 840,000 for the period from September 29 to October 6, according to flight data platform Umetrip, and airfares were up by about 44 percent compared with the May Day holidays.

Industry insiders said that the expansion of outbound group tours and loosened visa policies for Chinese tourists are favorable conditions for the further recovery of the outbound tourism market. 

China in August announced a third round of resumption of outbound group tour services to 78 countries and regions, including the US, Japan, South Korea, Australia, India and most European countries, expanding the scope from 60 to 138 countries and regions.  

Xu noted that although international flights have partially resumed, the flight capacity is still low, and visa processing times are still longer than during the pre-pandemic level. 

China's civil aviation authorities recently pledged to further promote the smooth and orderly recovery of international passenger flights.

The number of international passenger flights per week has recovered to 52 percent of the 2019 level, and the number of countries with passenger flight connectivity has recovered to nearly 90 percent of pre-pandemic levels, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said on September 15.

Notably, the number of flights to 14 countries, including the UK, Italy and the Maldives, has surpassed pre-pandemic levels, the CAAC said.