Don't look for China travel anytime soon

I read an interesting article in this week's issue of The Economist. China has built dedicated quarantine facilities for people entering the country. One outside of Guangzhou is about to open and will have a capacity of 5000 people. Another housing 2000 is being built in a nearby city. Regardless of vaccination status, you'll be taken to these facilities straight from the airport and forced to quarantine for two weeks with frequent testing and meals delivered by robots. Party officials are saying that China's fight against COVID will be a "protracted war" and will only end when the disease is fully eradicated. It doesn't sound like tourist travel will resume anytime soon. Tauck's 2023 tours may be overly optimistic.

Comments

  • Your post is a real downer! We have a Windstar (non-Tauck) cruise that goes to Hong Kong in October 2022. Have tickets to Japan booked, where the cruise originates. Booked this cruise after Tauck cancelled our tour from Singapore last year and now have doubts whether China will open for tourism next year. Have to plan for an alternative as Windstar says its too early to know if the cruise will go. They cancelled our first post-Covid cruise in the Caribbean only 10 days before we were scheduled to sail and hope this doesn't repeat itself.

  • Our first Windstar cruise, on “Star Breeze” was canceled three days before departure. We already had our PCR tests done … that day. You might have been on the second week of our back to back. We just rebooked for the following two weeks that were not canceled, and we had a great time. Windstar more than covered the costs of rebooking.

  • Not sure if Hong Kong has the same Covid policies as the mainland.

  • edited October 2021

    Hi Sealord; I think we were on that cruise as well. Now have $1.900 in American Airlines credits to use, but rarely fly American. We kept the money for the trip with Windstar and they gave us 125% credit against our Japan to Hong Kong trip we already had booked. We didn't want to chance the re-book of the Caribbean cruise, but it sounds like we should have. As far as restrictions go, from what I read Hong Kong is under the same travel restrictions as mainland China. Just hoping things are better by next October.

  • Unfortunately, I doubt China or Japan are in a hurry to open up, they don’t need the tourist money like some countries.

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