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☆ TUI: Luxury holiday demand boosts sales
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-20 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

BERLIN, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Travel giant TUI (TUIGn.DE) reported on Friday a boost in demand for luxury holidays, driving sales for the winter 2022/23 period higher than they had been in the corresponding 2018/19 period, before the COVID-19 pandemic hit international travel. "Demand is currently particularly strong," said Steffen Boehnke, director of airtours, TUI's luxury travel segment, in a statement. Sales for the summer 2023 period were above the level seen last year following strong bookings in the first weeks of January, according to the statement. "Our guests are booking more high-quality and for longer," said Boehnke, adding that trips were two and a half days longer on average and that around one in four travellers were choosing accommodation with villas or suites with a private pool. Reporting by Klaus Lauer, Writing by Rachel More, Editing by Maria SheahanOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

[1/3] A medical worker helps a patient receiving treatment at the emergency department of a hospital, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Shanghai, China January 17, 2023. Some health experts expect more than one million people will die from the disease in China this year, with British-based health data firm Airfinity forecasting COVID fatalities could hit 36,000 a day next week. Hospitalisations rose by 70% on the previous week to 63,307, according to the WHO, citing data submitted by Beijing. China said last Saturday that nearly 60,000 people with COVID had died in hospital between Dec. 8 and Jan. 12 - a roughly 10-fold increase from previous disclosures. However, that number excludes those who died at home, and some doctors in China have said they are discouraged from putting COVID on death certificates.

But retailers in popular Asian destinations are desperate to take advantage of the return of a first wave of Chinese tourists as the country reopens borders after three long years of COVID-19 curbs. And robust demand for destinations like Macau, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Thailand has boosted prospects for the battered travel industry, Ctrip booking data shows. Still, destinations elsewhere show that the return of Chinese tourists remains at a very early stage. Fresh COVID testing requirements for Chinese tourists in some locations may be acting as a barrier, while some countries also require visas that take time to process. Retailers in South Korea are also not seeing a huge influx in Chinese tourists yet, citing the suspension of short-term visas for travellers between both countries.

China said last Saturday that nearly 60,000 people with COVID died in hospitals between Dec. 8 and Jan. 12 - a roughly ten-fold increase from previous disclosures. However, that number excludes those who die at home, and some doctors in China have said they are discouraged from putting COVID on death certificates. China's chaotic exit from a regime of mass lockdowns, travel restrictions and frequent COVID testing, has also prompted a run on drugs as people fend for themselves against the disease. To meet soaring demand, drugmakers in China are ramping up operations to triple their capacity to make key fever and cough medicines, the state-run China Daily reported on Thursday. Medical facilities are relatively weak in rural areas, thus prevention is difficult and the task is arduous," Xi said, adding that the elderly were a top priority.

☆ Millions of Chinese workers on the move ahead of Friday travel peak
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( Bernard Orr | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

[1/3] A medical worker helps a patient receiving treatment at the emergency department of a hospital, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Shanghai, China January 17, 2023. Travellers bustled through railway stations and subways in Beijing and Shanghai, many ferrying large wheeled suitcases and boxes stuffed with food and gifts. The infection rate in the southern city of Guangzhou, capital of China's most populous province, has now passed 85%, local health officials announced on Wednesday. Clinics in rural villages and towns are now being fitted with oxygenators, and medical vehicles have also been deployed to isolated areas. Doctors in both public and private hospitals were being actively discouraged from attributing deaths to COVID, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

☆ China's Lunar New Year travel to boost economy after COVID crunch
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-17 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

While many analysts say a return to economic normality will be gradual as the impact of COVID weakens, some see the Lunar New Year as a welcome early consumption boost. But with so many people on the move, health experts fear a deepening of the COVID outbreak, leaving the elderly in rural villages particularly vulnerable. Reuters reported on Tuesday that doctors in both public and private hospitals were being actively discouraged from attributing deaths to COVID. State media reported that some 390,000 passengers were expected to travel from Shanghai train stations on Tuesday alone for what is known as the Spring Festival holiday - seen as the world's largest annual mass migration before COVID. As travellers moved through stations in Shanghai, China's largest city, some expressed optimism despite the risks.

☆ Davos 2023: Trip.com hopes China overseas travel capacity back to normal by Q3
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-17 | by ( Brenda Goh | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Travel website operator Trip.com Group Ltd (9961.HK) is working with airlines and airports to encourage recovery in China's cross-border travel capacity and hopes levels will return to normal by the third quarter, its CEO Jane Sun said on Tuesday. "Domestic travel for Chinese people travelling within China has already recovered to 2019 levels very rapidly," Sun told Reuters on the sidelines of the forum in the ski resort of Davos. At least one study has also pointed to some hesitancy over outbound travel among Chinese residents. The pandemic had reshaped demands from Chinese travellers, Sun said. Trip.com is one of the world's largest online travel agencies with over 400 million users, most of them in China.

Airfares from China are now 160% higher than before the pandemic, data from travel firm ForwardKeys shows, due to limited supply. Since Jan. 4, Air China (601111.SS), Hainan Airlines (600221.SS) and China Southern Airlines (600029.SS) have filed schedules with the U.S. Department of Transportation proposing to increase flights to as much as daily on some routes. Foreign carriers seeking to add flights to China require approvals from the Civil Aviation Administration of China, which did not respond to a request for comment. However, other flights were paused as it assessed market demand and government regulations. Many Western airlines parked large planes when international traffic plunged and production of new twin-aisle jets has been limited.

☆ China's Lunar New Year travel offers spark of economic rebound from COVID crunch
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-17 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

While many analysts say a return to economic normality will be gradual as the impact of COVID weakens, some see the Lunar New Year as a welcome early consumption boost. But even as workers move out, health experts fear a broadening and deepening of its COVID outbreak, leaving the elderly in rural villages particularly vulnerable. The WHO earlier welcomed Saturday's announcement after last week warning that China was heavily under-reporting deaths from the virus. "This is especially important during periods of surges when the health system is severely constrained," the statement said on Monday. As travellers moved through stations in Shanghai, China's largest city, some expressed optimism despite the risks.

After three years of strict and suffocating anti-virus controls, China in early December abruptly abandoned its "zero COVID" policy, letting the virus run freely through its 1.4 billion population. Several experts forecast more than one million people in China will die from the disease this year. TRAVEL RUSHBeijing's main rail station has been packed with passengers leaving the capital in recent days, according to Reuters witnesses. Meanwhile, daily arrivals in the gambling hub of Macau exceeded 55,000 on Saturday, the highest daily arrivals since the pandemic began. China's transport ministry has said it expects more than 2 billion trips in the weeks around the holidays.

☆ Air travel recovers in China amid COVID infection worries
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-14 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

The industry needs to "fully understand the special nature, and complexity of the Spring Festival migration in 2023", Song said in a statement on Friday. It expects a Spring Festival boom in tourism. Cinema box office receipts are on track to generate revenue of as much as 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) during the Spring Festival period, a brokerage has forecast. According to Guosen Securities, box office revenues in 2022 totalled less than 30 billion yuan, down 36% from a year earlier. ($1=6.7010 Chinese yuan renminbi)Reporting by Shanghai newsroom; Editing by Tony Munroe and Clarence FernandezOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

The removal of inbound quarantine prompted a surge in demand for plane tickets in countries like Singapore which have large communities of overseas Chinese. “China remained closed off after Singapore reopened, so to go back, people needed to do PCR tests, undergo quarantine, and prices of flight tickets skyrocketed. Chu said she had missed her parents, her 83-year-old father and 78-year-old mother, and worried about their failing health. Her biggest wish was to spend as much time with them as possible when she goes back this time. “I haven’t seen them for three years, and they both got COVID, and are quite old.

The UN agency said China was heavily under-reporting deaths from COVID, although it is now providing more information on its outbreak. China's foreign ministry said the country's health officials have held five technical exchanges with the WHO over the past month and have been transparent. Concerns over data transparency were among the factors that prompted more than a dozen countries to demand pre-departure COVID tests from travellers arriving from China. Tensions escalated this week with South Korea and Japan, with China retaliating by suspending short-term visas for their nationals. Still, traffic data and other indicators have not yet fully recovered to levels of just a few months ago.

☆ Why Singapore isn't imposing new travel rules on visitors from China
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-13 | by ( Monica Pitrelli | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

watch nowBut he said travel volumes between Singapore and China are "very low" — with fewer than 1,000 people arriving from China daily. "As of now, we run 38 weekly flights from China to Singapore, compared to around 400 flights pre-Covid," he said. Current rules are effectiveSo far, more than a dozen countries have announced new rules for visitors from China. In the same month, seven imported cases became severely ill, and only one was from China, he said. 'We do not discriminate'Ong noted that while some countries are imposing a pre-departure test requirement on visitors from China, Singapore will "not discriminate because severe cases can originate from any country."

☆ Mainland Chinese head to Hong Kong for mRNA COVID vaccines
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( Joyce Zhou | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

HONG KONG, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Scores of mainland Chinese travellers are rushing to Hong Kong to receive mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, which are not available on the Chinese mainland, as the country grapples with a torrent of infections which have overwhelmed its health system. A private hospital in the special Chinese administrative region of Hong Kong welcomed the first batch of mainland customers on Thursday, just five days after China reopened its borders for the first time in three years, allowing quarantine free travel. [1/5] Yoyo Liang, from mainland China, received a dose of BioNTech bivalent coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine at a private clinic in Hong Kong, China January 12, 2023. There is no bivalent vaccine available in mainland Chin," she explained after she received her jab. Virtus, which has received more than 300 inquiries so far about the vaccines, is expecting more mainland customers to come to Hong Kong in the coming weeks and months, the company's chief medical officer Samuel Kwok told reporters.

☆ Factbox: Countries mandate COVID tests for China travellers
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +7 min

SWEDENSweden will require travellers from China to show they have tested negative for COVID before they can enter the country, the government said. FRANCEFrance will require travellers from China to provide a negative COVID test result less than 48 hours before departure. INDIAThe country has mandated a COVID-19 negative test report for travellers arriving from China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Thailand. CANADAAir travellers to Canada from China must test negative for COVID-19 no more than two days before departure, Ottawa said. SPAINSpain will require a negative COVID-19 test or a full course of vaccination against the disease upon arrival for travellers from China.

That abrupt U-turn unleashed COVID on a 1.4 billion population which has been shielded from the virus since it first erupted in China's Wuhan city in 2019. The outbreak is now overwhelming hospitals and crematoriums as it rips through the population, where many elderly are still not fully vaccinated. "This is a very pertinent suggestion, return to the home town...or put the health of the elderly first," wrote one user. The country did not report COVID fatalities data on Tuesday and Wednesday. But concerns about China's outbreak has prompted more than a dozen countries to demand negative COVID test results from people arriving from China.

☆ Japan lodges protest to China over visa suspension
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-11 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

TOKYO, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Japan lodged a protest to China over the suspension of visas for Japanese citizens and asked that it overturn the action, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said on Wednesday. "It is regrettable that China unilaterally has taken visa suspension action for reasons other than steps for the coronavirus," Matsuno told a regular press conference. China's move came after Japan toughened COVID-19 border control rules for travellers coming directly from China, including a requirement for a negative PCR test result less than 72 hours before departure. Asked about Japan's border controls going forward, Matsuno said the government would respond appropriately based on China's coronavirus situation and its information disclosure. Reporting by Kaori Kaneko; Editing by Chang-Ran Kim and Tom HogueOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ China Southern flags 737 MAX flight in possible return of model
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-11 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

The scheduled flight is a domestic journey from the southern city of Guangzhou to Zhengzhou, the app showed. China Southern had also initially scheduled a return to commercial service for the 737 MAX in October 2022 but did not use it on the planned flights. Boeing said it would defer to airlines to comment on flight operations, while China Southern did not respond immediately to a request for comment. The 737 MAX was grounded in March 2019 following fatal crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia but has returned to service around the world with the exception of China and Russia after modifications to the aircraft and pilot training. Foreign airlines began flying the 737 MAX to China in October 2022.

REUTERS/Tingshu WangBEIJING, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Chinese state media defended on Wednesday the retaliatory measures against South Korea and Japan over their COVID-19 travel curbs as "reasonable", while Chinese tourists decried Seoul's "insulting" treatment on social media. South Korea, Japan, the United States and more than a dozen other countries imposed at the start of the year requirements for pre-departure negative test results from visitors from China. 'INSULTING'Chinese social media anger mainly targeted South Korea, whose border measures are the strictest among the countries that announced new rules. Global Times reserved a separate article for South Korea, saying the measures made Chinese people suspicious that Seoul was putting up a "political show." Annual spending by Chinese tourists abroad reached $250 billion before the pandemic, with South Korea and Japan among the top shopping destinations.

☆ South Korea calls China's visa suspension 'deeply regrettable'
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-11 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

SEOUL, Jan 11 (Reuters) - China's recent decision to suspend the issue of short-term visas in South Korea was "deeply regrettable", the South's Foreign Minister Park Jin said on Wednesday. Tuesday's suspension by the Chinese embassy in South Korea was China's first retaliatory move against countries imposing COVID-19 curbs on its travellers. "It's deeply regrettable China took such a countermeasure by entirely suspending issuance of short-term visas," Park told a news briefing, adding that South Korea still issues visas to Chinese visitors for urgent business or humanitarian purposes. Some Chinese tourists have complained over such curbs, which are the strictest among the new rules countries have adopted, but South Korea said they were not discriminatory. "I don't think it's desirable for these measures to have any negative impact on the South Korea-China relations," Park added.

GENEVA, Jan 11 (Reuters) - The World Health Organization said it is working with China to manage the risks of COVID-19 surging again as people travel for Lunar New Year celebrations but the country's response continues to be challenged by a lack of data. COVID-19 is spreading unchecked in China after the country lifted its zero-COVID policy in December, but the WHO said it still does not have enough information from China to make a full assessment of the dangers of the surge. That is also an issue in working with China on how to mitigate the risks of travel ahead of the Lunar New Year public holiday, which officially runs from Jan. 21, the WHO said. The WHO also said China is still heavily underreporting deaths from COVID-19, although it is now providing more information on its outbreak. "There are some very important information gaps that we are working with China to fill," said COVID-19 technical lead, Maria Van Kerkhove.

The holiday, known before the pandemic as the world's largest annual migration of people, comes amid an escalating diplomatic spat over COVID curbs that saw Beijing introduce transit curbs for South Korean and Japanese nationals on Wednesday. The virus is spreading unchecked in China after Beijing abruptly began dismantling its previously tight curbs in early December following historic protests. Among them, South Korea and Japan have also limited flights and require tests on arrival, with passengers showing up as positive being sent to quarantine. COUNTING DEATHSSome of the governments that announced curbs on travellers from China cited concerns over Beijing's data transparency. Annual spending by Chinese tourists abroad reached $250 billion before the pandemic, with South Korea and Japan among the top shopping destinations.

☆ Parts shortages impact Kenya Airways, cause flight disruptions
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-10 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

[1/2] Kenya Airways planes are seen parked at the Jomo Kenyatta International airport near Kenya's capital Nairobi, April 28, 2016. REUTERS/Thomas MukoyaNAIROBI, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Kenya Airways (KQNA.NR) is experiencing flight disruptions due to delays in securing aircraft components required for maintenance, the carrier said late on Monday. "The challenges have been occasioned by the Ukraine war crisis, which has significantly crippled the Russian supply chain crucial to global aviation," he said. Kenya Airways, whose strategy hinges on connecting African travellers to the world and vice-versa through its Nairobi hub, operates a fleet of Boeing and Embraer planes. Reporting by Duncan Miriri; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Sherry Jacob-PhillipsOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ China halts short-term visas in South Korea, first response to COVID curbs
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-10 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

BEIJING/SEOUL, Jan 10 (Reuters) - The Chinese embassy in South Korea has suspended issuing short-term visas for South Korean visitors, it said on Tuesday, the first retaliatory move against nations imposing COVID-19 curbs on travellers from China. A Chinese embassy official confirmed the new measures. South Korea's Park told Qin the new border restrictions were "science-based" measures, according to his office. Last week, South Korean police tracked down a Chinese man who went missing while awaiting quarantine after having tested positive for COVID-19 upon arrival. South Korea's President Yoon Suk-yeol said on Monday the country's border measures should focus strictly on the safety of its citizens.

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