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Beijing’s decision to allow group travel to Canada to resume for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic has sparked a surge in interest in visiting the country among Chinese consumers, with Chinese travel platforms recording a jump in related searches. China announced it was ending the group tour ban in early November, just days after Chinese President Xi Jinping met Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in South Korea and called for relations between the two countries to get “back onto the right track”. The move triggered an immediate reaction on Chinese travel platforms, with searches for flights to Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto on Qunar jumping by 223 per cent, 137 per cent and 61 per cent, respectively, within 30 minutes of the news breaking, according to the site’s parent company, Trip.com Group. Another platform, Fliggy, said it had recorded a “nearly twofold surge” in searches for flights to Canada in the hour after the announcement was made, compared with the day before. By Tuesday, the number of bookings by Chinese travellers bound for Canada was up 6 per cent week on week, according to Singapore-based travel marketing and technology firm China Trading Desk. “The interest to travel – searches on online platforms and inquiries to travel agents – has surged, with platforms reporting double the searches immediately after the announcement compared to the previous day,” said Subramania Bhatt, the company’s CEO. Chinese tourism to Canada was steadily growing before the pandemic, with visitor numbers rising to just over 708,000 in 2019, according to Destination Canada, the country’s national tourism organisation. But post-pandemic tourist flows have been far lower. Though individual travel resumed, tour groups remained banned amid frosty relations between Beijing and Ottawa. In 2025, a total of 470,000 Chinese travellers are expected to visit Canada, according to Destination Canada. Nevertheless, Canada remained a “highly attractive travel destination” for Chinese tourists, travel analysts said. Chinese travellers prize the country’s mountain and coastal scenery, as well as the opportunity to see the aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights. Many also have family members in cities like Toronto and Vancouver due to historic migration patterns. “From its iconic maple leaves and aurora to popular outdoor activities such as skiing, Canada offers a compelling alternative to the more familiar destinations in East and Southeast Asia,” said Zhang Chen, vice-president of public relations at Fliggy, in a statement to the Post. Banff National Park, Niagara Falls and Yellowknife, a city where the aurora can be seen, are particularly popular among Chinese tourists, Zhang added. Fliggy is owned by Alibaba Group Holding, which also owns the South China Morning Post. It remains unclear how big an impact the return of tour groups will have in the long run. Group travel has declined in popularity among Chinese tourists in recent years, with travellers increasingly favouring individual or family trips, according to CKGSB Knowledge, a magazine published by the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing. Charles Chang, a finance professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, said that group tours would be most attractive to Chinese consumers travelling overseas for the first time and people in medium-sized Chinese cities. Lingering tensions between China and Canada over issues such as the 2018 arrest of Meng Wanzhou, a senior executive at Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies, could also still deter travel, said Zhao Xijun, a finance professor at Beijing’s Renmin University of China. The impact of Meng’s arrest and the subsequent deterioration in China-Canada relations “was big on Chinese enterprises and common people”, Zhao said. “It will take a lot of work to eliminate that impact.”
