BEIJING – China, one of the most visited countries in the world, has seen sharply fewer tourists this year – with worsening air pollution partly to blame.
Numbers of foreign visitors have declined after January’s “Airpocalypse,” when already eye-searing levels of smog soared to new highs.
Tourists have been put off by news about smog and other problems, said Frano Ilic of travel agency Studiosus in Munich. He said the number of people booking trips to China through his company has fallen 16 percent this year.
“You are reading about smog. You are reading about political things,” Ilic said. “All the news which is coming from China concerning the nontouristic things are bad, frankly speaking.”
China is the world’s No. 3 destination for international travel after France and the United States. Weakness in visitor numbers could hurt government efforts to reduce reliance on trade-driven manufacturing by promoting cleaner service industries such as tourism. Foreign visitors are outnumbered by Chinese tourists but spend more.
The decline could be long-term if Beijing fails to make visible progress in combatting pollution, experts say.
That China’s air and water are badly polluted after three decades of breakneck growth is not news. But January’s record-setting bout of smog got worldwide news coverage and was so bad that some longtime foreign residents left the country.
From January to June, the total number of foreign visitors, including business travelers and residents, entering China declined by 5 percent to just less than 13 million compared with the same period last year, according to the China National Tourism Administration. Overall, visitors from Asia, Australia, Europe and the Americas all declined.
In Beijing, with major attractions including the Great Wall and the Imperial Palace, the drop is even more striking. The number of foreign tourists visiting the Chinese capital fell by 15 percent in the first six months of the year to 1.9 million, according to the Beijing Tourism Administration.
The China National Tourism Administration acknowledges a decline in foreign tourists to China as a whole and in cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Xiamen, a prosperous port city in the southeast.
It blames the global economic slowdown and a stronger Chinese currency and says China’s tourism image has been hurt by the emergence of H7N9 bird flu, air pollution and dead pigs found floating in Shanghai’s main river.
The city of Awara in central Japan canceled a student exchange trip because of bad air. Eighteen Japanese students were to visit the eastern coastal city of Shaoxing under an annual exchange program that goes back 30 years.
Such trips might resume next year if conditions improve, said Toshihiro Nukami, an employee of Awara’s City Hall.
Beijing’s official air-quality reports show improvement from recent years. But Steven Andrews, an environmental and legal consultant, said other data show a decline.
An analysis of U.S. Embassy readings of smaller, more harmful airborne particles, show this year’s pollution is significantly worse than in the last three years, Andrews said.
Beijing’s city government only started publicly releasing air-quality data in January 2012 that measured PM2.5, or fine particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter. They can enter deep into the lungs and can cause more damage. They are considered a more accurate reflection of air quality than other pollutants.
According to Andrews’ calculations, the average PM2.5 reading in the first half of 2013 was about 118 micrograms per cubic meter, compared with 95 last year and 89 in 2011.
“In other words, so far this year, the air pollution is about 25 percent worse than the first half of last year,” he said.
