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.
Tags: China, Hainan, China News
