China’s Tourism Industry under COVID-19: Impact & Response

Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 has strained the global economic situation, and many industries are facing serious threats. As COVID-19 continues to spread across the globe, countries around the world have introduced strict travel controls. The tourism business has experienced unprecedented effects as a result of unfavorable external circumstances and customer anxiety. This paper examines COVID-19's effects on the travel and tourism sector, explaining the development status of China's domestic, inbound and outbound tourism market under the impact of COVID-19 pandemic, discovering the changes of college students' travel decisions before and after the pandemic, and demonstrating the severe damages of tourism enterprises, in particular, enterprises that mainly operate the hotel business and travel agency business. After that, the effectiveness and rationality of the existing tourism recovery strategies are evaluated. This paper adopted the research methods of questionnaire survey and chart analysis to investigate the changes in college students' tourism consumption and the number of trips before and after the epidemic, and to evaluate the tourism recovery strategies which are implemented in China, such as issuing travel consumption coupons, the government's economic support for tourism companies. Eventually, the most suitable recovery strategy for China's current tourist market will be analyzed.