Chinese visitors answer Africa's call of the wild

Improvements needed

Africa, however, still faces problems when it comes to safety and adequate tourism infrastructure and services. High on the list of concerns are not enough quality hotels, inadequate Wi-Fi coverage, and traffic problems.

"Safety is the most important issue for travelers," said Yang Jinsong, from the China Tourism Academy.

"The emergency response in some African countries whenever travelers encounter a dangerous situation still needs some effort to improve. Also, higher prices for flight tickets, accommodation and short-range transport within the continent, may also hamper its tourism growth," he said, adding that language barriers caused by many African countries using French, may be an additional inconvenience for Chinese travelers.

However, Yang remains bullish on future tourism exchanges and cooperation between China and Africa.

"Many African countries, such as Mauritius and Morocco, have visa-free or visa-on-arrival policies for Chinese people, and the people there are very friendly and kind to Chinese people," he said, adding that deeper and closer cooperation on the economy, culture and other sectors will consolidate the continent's attractiveness to Chinese people.

Yang is confident travel costs from the Chinese mainland to Africa will drop in the near future due to the expansion of bilateral exchanges.

"Africa is a young continent with much greater economic potential yet to be fully tapped that is in the process of urbanization and industrialization," he said. "So, tourism products and services will see their costs decrease during the continent's development," Yang added.

African tourist destinations have also made greater efforts to win over more Chinese tourists by adding additional flights, organizing promotions and optimizing visa policies to make it easier for Chinese travelers to access the continent, he said.

South Africa, for example, is planning to increase the number of return flights to the Chinese mainland from three times a week to one a day. It is also organizing exhibitions in several major Chinese cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, to promote its attractions.

Hu Juanjuan, trade relations manager for South African Tourism, told a recent forum in Beijing that the number of Chinese travelers to South Africa had recovered to 60 percent of the pre-pandemic level. The country's tourism bureau has set a target of attracting over 50,000 Chinese tourists in the 2024-25 fiscal year, and hopes to get the number back to the 2019 level by 2026, Hu said.