There has been a sharp increase in the number of Spring Festival passengers compared with the same period last year, further clarifying the characteristics of service consumption after the epidemic. A total of 303.29 million passengers were sent 8 days before the Spring Festival travel in 2023, although there is still a big gap between the same period in 2019 and the same period in 2019, but an increase of 47% over the same period in 2022. Admittedly, the market does not pay attention to this higher year-on-year growth rate, because the low base greatly weakens the quality of high growth.

However, tourism directly benefits from the mitigated impact of the epidemic, and the certainty of tourism recovery is much higher than that of other economic sectors. For this deterministic high-speed growth, it is necessary for us to pay attention to its macro impact. We use a macro-statistical definition of tourism here, which is relatively broad: "Tourism refers to tourists' travel, accommodation, catering, sightseeing, shopping, entertainment and other activities. Tourists refer to sightseeing, leisure and entertainment, visiting relatives and friends, culture and sports, health care, short-term education (training), religious worship, or for the purpose of official business, etc., to go outside the usual environment Travelers who travel for less than a year.

The gap in tourism income before and after the epidemic has reached 3.4 trillion yuan (estimated to be equivalent to 2.8 per cent of GDP in 2022). China's domestic tourism revenue reached 5.73 trillion yuan in 2019, while the China Tourism Academy expects domestic tourism revenue to be 2.35 trillion yuan in 2022. Domestic tourism revenue in 2022 is 3.4 trillion yuan lower than in 2019, which is expected to be equivalent to 2.8% of GDP in 2022. This is a very big gap.

There may still be some uncertainty as to whether tourism revenue in 2023 will return to 2019: on the one hand, from overseas experience, service consumption has not fully recovered to that before the epidemic; but on the other hand, from the growth of tourism income before the epidemic in China, China's tourism demand is still in a structural rising stage.

Chart: the gap in tourism income before and after the epidemic has reached 3.4 trillion yuan (equivalent to 2.8% of GDP in 2022).

It is conservatively estimated that the year-on-year growth of tourism revenue in 2023 is expected to exceed 1 trillion yuan (0.9% in 2022). If the year-on-year growth of tourism revenue in 2023 is estimated based on the year-on-year growth of tourists in the eight days before the Spring Festival travel season (47 per cent), the increase in tourism revenue in 2023 is expected to reach 1.1 trillion yuan, equivalent to 0.9 per cent of GDP in 2022. Of course, this is a relatively rough estimate, and the estimated results may be relatively conservative for three reasons:

► January fever clinic visits are still relatively large, resulting in a certain drag on travel demand, the late Spring Festival travel and post-holiday travel or further recovery. Jiao Yahui, director of the Medical Department of the National Health Commission, said that the number of emergency visits nationwide reached a peak of 1.526 million on January 2, and dropped to 1.092 million on January 12. Although the peak of emergency treatment has passed, the absolute number is still not low. Infection in early January may still affect travel in mid-January, but the impact may be gradually weakening. There is a significant increase in the year-on-year increase in passengers on the eighth day of the Spring Festival, and we need to see if this trend will continue.

Chart: the growth rate of passengers jumped on the eighth day of Spring Festival travel compared with the same period last year.

Per capita tourism spending in ► is likely to increase year-on-year, so tourism revenue is likely to rise more than the number of tourists. Due to the influence of the epidemic in 2022, tourism is mainly concentrated in the suburbs and short trips, and the per capita cost may be lower. One evidence is that the decline in holiday tourism income in 2022 is greater than the decline in the number of tourists. As the share of long-distance travel is likely to rise further after 2023, per capita tourism consumption expenditure is also likely to increase. One evidence is that New Year's Day's tourism income increased more than the number of tourists during the period.

Chart: during New Year's Day's period, the increase in tourism income was higher than that in the number of tourists, and the per capita expenditure of tourists may return to growth.

The period when ► was most affected by the epidemic in 2022 was not last year's Spring Festival travel. The relatively significant impact of the epidemic in 2022 includes the second and fourth quarters, and the beginning of 2022 is not the worst period of the epidemic, which means that the base may be lower and the year-on-year increase may be greater.

The pull of tourism income on growth may not necessarily be reflected in the statistics of GDP, but it may be very obvious in the financial statements of listed companies, residents' income and daily life.

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism is responsible for the statistics of domestic tourism income, which combines the location data of operators with sample surveys, calculates the number of tourists through location data, and calculates per capita consumption through regular micro-surveys, so as to calculate domestic tourism income. There are still some differences between this statistical method and GDP accounting. In fact, there is not a special subject of tourism statistics in GDP accounting. The GDP of the tourism industry published by the Bureau of Statistics is based on its summation of the relationship between different industries and tourism definitions, and the specific summary details have not been further published in 2019, 2020 and 2021. The GDP of tourism industry announced by the Bureau of Statistics is 4.5 trillion yuan, 4.1 trillion yuan and 4.5 trillion yuan respectively, and its fluctuation is far less than that of domestic tourism income.

Although the fluctuation of tourism income may not be reflected on GDP, the high probability of such a rebound in the tourism sector will be echoed by other data. For example, the financial statements of listed companies in related industries may be clearly improved, and the household income and consumption data counted by household survey methods may get a certain boost. In addition, we will also have a relatively clear feeling in media reports and daily life. This feeling can also have an impact on investment decisions in the real economy and the secondary market by affecting mood and confidence.

But it is worth noting that some of the year-on-year increase in tourism revenue may also translate into inflationary pressures. In 2019, there were 338000 hotels, including 286000 non-chain hotels; in 2021, there were 252000 hotels, a decrease of 25% compared with 2019; and 195000 non-chain hotels in 2021, down 32% from 2019.

In terms of industry characteristics, non-chain hotels are generally ordinary hotels with relatively small scale and low prices. although the number has decreased, it does not mean that the real estate where the hotel is located at that time has disappeared, and the threshold for entry into the industry is not high. the speed of resuming operation may be faster than that of large hotels. But in any case, travel demand may recover faster than supply, and relatively small supply may still cause some inflationary pressures in the early stages of demand recovery.

Chart: the number of hotels in the country is lower than before the epidemic.

Edit / lydia