Koreans on ‘revenge travel’ as Covid rules ease and China lifts entry ban

HanaTour Service Inc. headquarters in Seoul [Photo by Park Hyung-ki]

South Koreans are on a revenge travel overseas to make up for three years of being restricted from leaving the country as many of the last Covid measures are being lifted.

China appears to be finally allowing Koreans in group tours to enter the country as several groups of Korean tourists are starting to leave for China with a valid tourist visa for the first time since the pandemic.

According to sources from the Korean tourism industry, a group of 26 people who booked a tour of Mt. Baekdu on the border between North Korea and China, through HanaTour Service Inc., the largest travel company in Korea, departed Gimhae International Airport on an Air Busan flight at 09:00 a.m. Wednesday and arrived at Yanji Chaoyangchuan International Airport at 10:40 a.m. before embarking on their trip to Mt. Baekdu.

It is the first time in more than four years since the outbreak of Covid-19 that a group of Korean tourists has embarked on a trip to a region in China with a valid Chinese tourist visa. On April 24, another tour group will depart for Zhangjiajie in the northwest of China’s Hunan province.

China had implemented indirect visa restrictions on Koreans by inducing tourists to have their fingerprints collected to obtain a Chinese visa. These are the first groups to enter China through the old method of submitting relevant documents to Chinese authorities before restrictions were put in place. The industry is interpreting this as a signal that the Chinese government is ready to lift its entry ban on Korean tourists. Some even predict that Beijing may allow more Koreans to travel throughout China ahead of its Labor Day holidays in early May.

Local travel agencies are seeing reservation inquiries on the rise. Tour packages to China, which were closed until the end of last month, are now fully booked for the holidays in May. The number of people who have made reservations for tours to China through HanaTour has exceeded 1,000.

“Reservations for tours to China have been on the rise since early April. More than one in 10 people are making reservations for a trip to China,” said a HanaTour official. “If this trend continues, we will be able to recover to the pre-pandemic level before June.”

A worker at HanaTour Service Inc. headquarters in Seoul [Photo by Park Hyung-ki]

It is not just Koreans going to China. According to data from China’s online travel agency Ctrip’s market research platform FlightAI, as of April 14, Korea ranked fourth as the destination outside the mainland for outbound air ticket bookings during the upcoming May Day holiday, after Hong Kong, Bangkok and Singapore. Excluding Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, the country practically ranked third. Industry insiders predict cautiously that travel-related regulations between Korea and China will be lifted completely before July, the peak holiday season.

As most countries around the world are lifting Covid-related restrictions this year as cases drop, demand for overseas travel is exploding in Korea. Demand for overseas travel during the upcoming holidays in May has exceeded levels seen before Covid-19.

According to online retail platform Interpark, the number of people making reservations for overseas travel packages for May, which were sold for three months from January 1 to April 7 this year, increased by 43 percent from the same period in 2019, before the Covid-19 crisis, and by 3000 percent from last year.

Vietnam is the most popular overseas destination, accounting for 28 percent of all reservations, followed by Japan at 12 percent, Thailand at 9 percent, the Philippines at 7 percent and Western Europe at 6 percent, which shows preference for short-distance travel destinations, such as Southeast Asia and Japan, over long-distance destinations, according to Interpark.

According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, the total number of travelers using domestic and international flights in the first quarter of this year was about 9.82 million, exceeding 9.8 million for a three-month period for the first time since the pandemic. This represents a 62.1 percent recovery from the level seen in the first quarter of 2019.

Incheon International Airport expects the number of international passengers to increase to 53 million, or an average of 145,000 per day, by the end of this year. This is 76 percent of 70.58 million in 2019, an average of 190,000 per day.