China set to lead Thailand’s tourism recovery from August

A comprehensive new survey of consumers in China’s first-tier cities has concluded that 53% of respondents would like to travel overseas within 2020. More so, the most popular months for trips abroad for the remainder of the year are August, October and December.

Thailand is one of the most impacted travel markets by COVID-19 in Asia. The country hosted 39.8 million international visitors last year with China accounting for nearly 11 million arrivals. The expanded Thai tourism, hotel and travel sector contributes between 12-15% of GDP to Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy.

The newly released China Thailand Travel Sentiment Survey 2020 focused on key demand factors in the country’s reopening of the tourism economy. A strong positive message from the research is that 71% of Chinese consumers said they would like to visit Thailand.

Using the China survey as a forecasting tool for the hotel industry, an interesting shift in a segment traditionally leveraged in the mass market is that 83% of potential visitors would choose independent travel versus a group tour. The top five preferred booking channels for Chinese travelers in order are Ctrip (61%), Fliggy (16%), hotel websites (9%), Booking.com (5%) and WeChat (5%).