China's domestic tourism revenue to near $600b in 2022: expert

SHANGHAI -- China's domestic tourism revenue is expected to reach 3.81 trillion yuan (about $598 billion) in 2022, Dai Bin, president of the China Tourism Academy, said on Saturday.

A total of 3.98 billion trips are expected to be made in 2022, nearly 70 percent of that in 2019.

The country's tourism industry made a volatile recovery in 2021. Dai estimated that the number of domestic trips in 2021 was 3.43 billion, up 19 percent from 2020, and China's domestic tourism revenue in 2021 was 3.02 trillion yuan, up 35 percent year on year.

He noted that the two driving forces for the recovery of the tourism industry were the urbanites' demand for leisure and the rural residents' demand for sightseeing.

Local leisure activities, short-term trips, self-guiding trips, family trips and cultural-experience trips will become new trends in 2022, Dai said.