Plan to increase travel flow to China

China seeks to play a greater role in global tourism over the next five years, by moving the focus away from Europe. Within that timeframe, the country will move from just being the largest supplier of medical tourists in the world to also being the largest medical tourism destination, mostly to Hainan.

The State Council of China issued the Development Plan for the Tourism Sector During the 14th Five-Year Plan Period (2021-2025) making arrangements for improving the openness and cooperation of tourism, and specifically underlining the role of the World Tourism Cities Federation (WTCF) and other international organisations in promoting global tourism development. China and the WTCF will likely seek to shift the global focus from Europe to Asia with this Plan.

According to the Plan, on the premise of effective containment of the global COVID-19 spread, China will leverage the potential of its tourism market, coordinate both the domestic and international markets, take steps to promote inbound tourism, develop outbound tourism, and continuously facilitate tourism exchanges and cooperation.

The Plan also specially advocates enhanced cooperation with the United Nations World Tourism Organisation and others, while leveraging the role of WTCF and other international organisations to boost world tourism development.

WTCF is aiming to build a platform for international exchanges and cooperation among world tourism cities, promote exchanges and cooperation among the members and related cities and institutions, and play a bigger role globally through curated brand activities and further academic research.

It is too early to know if inbound or outbound medical tourism are specifically part of this Plan, but as China is both the top supplier of medical travellers and moving to being the largest destination too, it may well be in there.