Visa-free and other cross-border travel facilitation policies have fueled Chinese people's passion to travel abroad and attracted more foreign tourists to embark on a China trip amid the reopening of more of international flight routes.
Thanks to the favorable policies, Chinese citizens' appetite for traveling to visa-free countries including Thailand and Malaysia for the upcoming Spring Festival holiday season has significantly increased compared to previous years.
Additionally, the Guangzhou-Kuala Lumpur route linking southern Chinese metropolis to the Malaysian capital has ranked among the top five of international popular routes for the first time.
Zhu, a Chinese tourist, said he and his family members hope to travel to the much warmer tropical Malaysia during the Spring Festival holiday, which is just two weeks away, to relax.
"We're going on a trip to Kuala Lumpur of Malaysia. We have been planning for this trip for a long time, because we didn't have the chance to travel in the past one or two years. My whole family is looking forward to this trip," he said.
"We will take our child to Semporna to see the Jelly Sea. Then we will travel to the Strait of Malacca to show our kid the places mentioned in textbooks," said Zhang, Zhu's wife.
Meanwhile, a number of new border entry facilitation measures, including unilateral visa-free arrangement for some countries since 2023, have brought in more overseas tourists to visit China, and driven inbound tourism for the Spring Festival holiday season.
Statistics from China's online booking platforms show that the inbound travel orders for the Spring Festival this year have already increased by more than 10 times year-on-year, with tourists mainly from countries like Japan, the United States, South Korea, Malaysia, Germany and Thailand.