(Yicai) June 3 -- Booking by Chinese tourists to countries that have visa waiver agreements with China have soared for the upcoming three-day Dragon Boat Festival holiday.

Outbound travel bookings to Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, Georgia, Tunisia, and Iran jumped 54 percent, 141 percent, 139 percent, 171 percent, and 100 percent, respectively, from a year earlier for the holiday that starts on June 8, The Paper reported yesterday, citing data from Chinese online travel agency Trip.Com.

Since the end of last year, China has signed short-term mutual visa-free entry policies with several countries in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Europe and resumed visa waivers that had been suspended during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Among the European visa-free countries for Chinese tourists, bookings for Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina have jumped 55 percent and 71 percent, Trip.Com data also showed.

The most popular visa-free destinations are countries closer to China because of the holiday’s short duration. Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Jeju Island, the only region in South Korea that holders of regular Chinese passports can visit without a visa, are among the top ports of call, according to Chinese travel service and social networking platform Mafengwo.

Outbound tourism has been recovering steadily since the end of the pandemic, so countries requiring visas for Chinese tourists are also popular for the holiday. For example, bookings for hotels in Japan have more than doubled on Trip.Com because of the country’s proximity and the favorable exchange rate between their currencies.

Moreover, the summer holiday is approaching, so outbound travel is ticking upward for seasonal factors. Visa applications for this summer soared 1.5-fold compared with last year, according to data from Trip.Com. Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada are the top five destinations by visa applications.

In April and May, the volume of visa applications for Japan increased five-fold from a year earlier and three-fold from the same period of 2019, Trip.Com data showed.

Editor: Futura Costaglione