It’s a common experience for veteran China travellers, though an often shocking one for first-time visitors: being told by a hotel, “Sorry, we don’t allow foreigners.”
At best, the news comes via an e-mail or phone call, prompting a scouring of online listings and reviews for a prospective replacement that is foreigner-friendly. At worst, it can be delivered at check-in, with a frown and a shrug of “nothing can be done,” leaving the international visitor scrambling to find somewhere, anywhere, to stay the night.
Even as international tourism to China almost doubled between 2000 and 2019, with arrivals growing from 83 million to more than 162 million, according to World Bank data, this problem remained pervasive. Hotels in China are required to register foreign arrivals with the police, and many are either not connected to the central database or don’t want to deal with the paperwork. Problems processing foreign credit cards, especially as China has shifted more and more to mobile payments, have also created a disincentive to welcoming international tourists.
But with foreign tourism still struggling to recover from the pandemic – there were just 14.64 million arrivals in the first half of 2024 – Beijing has declared that such barriers have to go, part of a raft of policies designed to boost international travel to a country that was once a reliable bucket list item for people across the world.
Last month, the Ministry of Commerce and six other government departments issued a circular warning hotels and online booking platforms that refusing foreign guests is illegal in most circumstances. The government has promised to simplify the information collection process, urging hotels to “provide a more foreigner-friendly accommodation environment” by hiring English-speaking staff or utilizing translation apps at check-in.
Since December, China has also rolled out visa-free entry for up to 15 days for citizens of 12 European countries, along with Australia and New Zealand, and double that length of time for Singaporeans, Malaysians and Thais. Tourists from dozens of other countries – including Canada – can also spend 72 hours in China without a visa provided they are transiting through the country.
Tourist visas for China have to be applied for in person in most countries and can involve extensive paperwork, putting off some foreign travellers – particularly when most other top Asian destinations offer visa-free travel or visas on arrival.
Wu Liyun, an expert on tourism at Beijing Foreign Studies University, said the new measures are an important step in “breaking down the barriers for foreign travellers.”
However, she noted that other issues remain, not the least of which are payment problems. Foreign credit cards are not widely accepted in China, and the country is almost completely cashless, particularly in big cities.
“I talked to a few hotel owners during my research, and they said banks required a relatively cumbersome application process to enable foreigners to swipe their cards,” Prof. Wu said.
She said foreigners can register for Alipay and WeChat, the two most widely used digital wallets in China, but doing so often requires an existing user to validate them before they can send payments. “So if they don’t have any WeChat friends, they can’t use this feature.”
In March, after China’s State Council introduced new guidelines requiring “higher-quality, more effective and more convenient payment services” for foreign visitors, Alipay said it was boosting spending limits for international users, while WeChat owner Tencent said it was introducing a top-up plan so foreigners could add money to their accounts without linking their bank cards.
China’s economy has struggled since the pandemic, making boosting tourism even more important than before, but the benefits are not just monetary, Prof. Wu said. “In the past, foreigners may know China through their media. When they really come here, they will see with their own eyes,” she said. “Many foreigners may think that China is backward and closed before, and what they can see after coming here will break their preconceptions and stereotypes.”
Yvette Thompson, general manager for sales and marketing for Australia and New Zealand at tour agency Intrepid Travel, agreed.
“The more that we talk around the reasons to go to China – the diverse landscapes, the history, the difference between imperial Beijing versus futuristic Shanghai – I think the faster that negative PR dissipates,” she said.
That may be easier said than done, however, particularly in the West, where perceptions of China have plummeted in recent years.
According to a recent survey of people from 35 countries by Pew Research, 70 per cent of respondents from high-income countries said they had an unfavourable opinion of China. Feelings were most negative among Western countries, with only Greece, of 10 European nations surveyed, having an overall favourable opinion of China, while 71 per cent and 81 per cent, respectively, of Canadians and Americans said they felt unfavourably toward the country.
With files from Alexandra Li in Beijing and Reuters