Hainan sees huge tourism boom

Tuesday, December 8, 2020

Millions of domestic tourists are descending on China’s southernmost island province of Hainan, presenting a surreal contrast to grim hospital scenes, shuttered restaurants and stifling home quarantine elsewhere in a virus-ravaged world. Known at home as the “Hawaii of China”, the island, about the size of Taiwan, has been free of coronavirus for six months, drawing eager shoppers to duty-free malls, couples seeking a sub-tropical backdrop for wedding pictures and surfers just looking to “breathe freely”.

The month of October arrivals of 9.6 million, according to official data, exceeded the year-earlier figure, before the pandemic struck, by 3.1 percent, although foreign visitors slumped 87 percent. That was a far cry from February, when arrivals had dropped almost 90 percent.

The rapid surge in tourism shows China’s consumer sector may be throwing off its virus-induced slumber as the closure of many international borders pushes travellers to destinations such as Hainan, traditionally costlier than most of Southeast Asia. The tourism spending has got a leg up since a new duty-free spending cap of 100,000 yuan ($15,186) for travellers took effect in July, up from 30,000 yuan ($4,592) earlier.

Hainan has raked in 12 billion yuan ($1.8bn) in such sales in the following four months, to stand up 214.1 percent on the year, or almost on par with 2019 sales of 13.61 billion ($2bn). The tourists racing through the Haitang Bay Duty Free Shopping Center in the island’s city of Sanya were astonished at the queues outside the boutiques of luxury brands from Chanel to Gucci, with some likening the scene to a yard sale.

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