Chinese Travel companies turn to live streaming and advance purchase for recovery
The road to recovery for China's travel industry is still littered with uncertainties.
There were early signs of recovery at the end of the first quarter, reflected by Fliggy's data showing that the sales of train and tourist attraction tickets for the Qingming Festival holiday on March 17-23 were some 10% higher than a week earlier, and hotel reservations rose 30% during the time.
However, given the pandemic is still wreaking havoc globally, strict control measures are still in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19 after initial success in containing the epidemic. In some instances, top tourist attractions in Shanghai including the Oriental Pearl TV Tower that had re-opened earlier last month were ordered to close again on March 30.
Signs of recovery
The Qingming holiday was the first turning point for Chinese travel companies, a welcomed respite after their business was decimated by the epidemic in the past two months.
"Clearly, business at this year's Qingming holiday couldn't compare with last year's due to the impact of COVID-19," said Mr. Genfang Ding, chairman and general manager of Guangzhou-based Kulv Travel Agency.
Yet the situation turned out not as dire as feared.
"Business has been picking up since mid-March with the company's orders nearly doubling every week. The number of daily reservations rose by 20%-30% at the end of March," said Mr. Ding, who revealed the company had almost zero orders in February and reservations in March plummeted to just 10% of the volume at the same time last year.
Kulv owns consumer-facing short-haul travel specialist Yaochufa, advance purchase-based lifestyle e-commerce platform Yunkezan, and family travel service Kuyaqinzi. Yaochufa and Yunkezan contributed larger shares of sales turnover for the company.
