30/04/2020
- Outbound flights from Beijing were 15 times higher on one travel site within half an hour of Beijing relaxing quarantine requirements on the city
- The rebound in bookings spells some hope for online travel providers in China as the country emerges from a pandemic which saw widespread travel restrictions
Passengers arrive from a domestic flight at Beijing Capital Airport on March 27, 2020. Photo: AFP
Within an hour of Beijing
downgrading its emergency response level, relaxing quarantine requirements for some arrivals to the Chinese capital city, travel bookings on some sites surged up to 15 times.
Thirty minutes after the announcement on Wednesday, bookings for outbound flights from Beijing were 15 times higher than before the announcement on Qunar, one of the biggest online travel service providers in China. Searches for travel packages and hotel bookings on the platform also increased three-fold, according to a Qunar report.
On Alibaba Group Holding‘s Fliggy travel platform, bookings for flight and trains heading in and out of Beijing increased 500 per cent and 300 per cent respectively one hour after the announcement, compared to the same time a day ago, according to a Fliggy report. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
Bookings for flight and train tickets in Beijing for the upcoming Labour Day long weekend also increased more than 300 per cent and 160 per cent respectively on Chinese group buying site Meituan Dianping on Wednesday after the announcement compared to the day before, while searches for the attractions in the Beijing area on the platform increased almost three times from a week ago, according to Meituan.
“The surge in searches for travel in Beijing was because the lockdown measures in the city were the strictest in the country after work resumed,” said Jiang Xinwei, senior analyst with Analysys. “Consumption among residents was suppressed [during the lockdowns], so there is now a rebound in bookings.”
China’s online travel sites prepare for surge in domestic tourism
The rebound in bookings spells some hope for online travel providers in China as the country gradually emerges from a pandemic which the Chinese government responded to by implementing strict quarantine measures, shutting down tourist attractions and suspending group tours.
Beijing-based consultancy Analysys
estimates that China’s national tourism economy lost at least 10 billion yuan (US$1.4 billion) a day on average during the outbreak, with travel service providers like Qunar and Ctrip overloaded with millions of booking changes as well as cancellation and refund requests.
The relaxation of travel restrictions in and out of Beijing also comes ahead of a
, which starts on Friday and is the first extended public holiday after Lunar New Year in late January.
In November, the Chinese government lengthened the holiday from the original three days to five to stimulate consumption and encourage travelling amid a slowing economy weighed down by the US-China trade war.
Some cities, such as Huzhou in eastern China’s Zhejiang province and Kunming in southwestern province Yunnan, have issued travel vouchers to stimulate consumption for the tourist industry, according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
Ctrip estimated that there would be more than 86 million domestic tourists during the long weekend – more than double the number of travellers seen during the Ching Ming Festival in April, which recorded 43 million tourists, according to the China Tourism Academy.
However, Jiang said the rebound this week does not mean the Chinese travel industry is out of the red. “The travel industry will recover partially during the public holiday, but this will not be more than 60 per cent [of levels before the pandemic],” he said. “The government needs to do more to signal that travelling is safe and encourage residents to do so.”
Source: SCMP
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26/03/2020
- For many small factories and service businesses, the process of returning to normal operations after disruptions from the coronavirus pandemic has been harder
- Chinese authorities have been pushing for SMEs to make use of technologies such as remote working and smart manufacturing platforms to resume operations quickly
Workers pack instant river snail rice noodles at a factory in Liuzhou, south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Jan. 2, 2020. Photo: Xinhua
(SMEs) in China have been resuming work at a faster rate since March with the help of government measures to promote their adoption of technology, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information (MIIT) said in a news conference on Wednesday.
As of Tuesday, 71.7 per cent of SMEs using cloud-based platforms had resumed production, up from 29.6 per cent a month earlier, said Qin Zhihui, deputy director of MIIT’s SME bureau.
Industrial internet platforms, which help to “coordinate production and prevent risks, ensure the integrity and safety of supply chains and give support to key areas which may experience potential work disruptions”, have helped some businesses resume operations, MIIT spokesman Xie Shaofeng said at the same news conference.
“Others used cloud-based computing to help enterprises move their business operations online, promoting remote working, teleconferencing, online training, co-researching and e-commerce,” he added.
For many small factories and service businesses, which account for most employment in China, the process of returning to normal operations
has been more difficult than for larger firms. The smaller firms, for example, are often unable to meet virus prevention conditions set by local governments, including having enough facial masks for employees.
Workers at 60 per cent of Chinese firms still telecommuting under lockdown
In a notice last week, MIIT encouraged SMEs to make use of digital tools such as
and smart manufacturing platforms to resume operations as soon as possible, and urged cloud services providers to open up services for SMEs in both services and manufacturing sectors.
The ministry also said in the notice that it had rolled out more than 370 online training courses for SMEs to stay informed about government policies and access opportunities to learn managerial and technological skills. It said the courses had been viewed more than 8 million times.
China’s cloud infrastructure, which enables remote working and online learning among other applications, has grown rapidly over the past few years. The market grew 66.9 per cent to US$3.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2019, according to a Canalys report last week, with Alibaba Group Holding’s Alibaba Cloud accounting for 46.6 per cent of the market, followed by Tencent Cloud with 18 per cent and Baidu’s AI Cloud with 8.8 per cent.
Alibaba is the parent company of the South China Morning Post.
Source: SCMP
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