Posters of famous sites around the world adorn the walls of the Utour Group travel agency headquarters in Beijing. There’s the Eiffel Tower, a cruise ship in the Mediterranean Sea and a full advertisement dedicated to Canada featuring Lake Louise and Vancouver’s skyline.
Flanked by these ads, Li Wei discussed her travel options with a Utour agent. While the Rockies weren’t on her immediate list of places to visit, she said she was considering it more seriously as Beijing started allowing group tours to Canada again this winter.
In fact, Li says she has a nephew studying in Toronto and, at one point many years ago, was considering trying to emigrate.
“I would definitely go there to experience Canada’s life, environment and atmosphere,” she told CBC News.
For her, the draw is the “beautiful scenery” and that it’s a “multi-ethnic country.”
In the wake of a diplomatic freeze and COVID-19 measures that saw China impose blanket travel restrictions on Canada, Chinese tourists are considering Canadian options again as they plan their next vacation. This turn is a huge relief to the tourism industry as those visitors make up an essential part of its revenue, while people in Canada are putting China higher on their bucket list, too.
When China first banned group travel to Canada and other countries in 2020, relations between Beijing and Ottawa were already at a low, with tech giant Huawei’s Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou arrested in Vancouver on a U.S. extradition warrant in 2018. That same month, China detained Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.
Travel statistics seem to reflect these realities.
Data provided by Statistics Canada shows non-resident visitors entering Canada have steadily increased in the last few years, though they haven’t reached pre-pandemic levels.
The latest available statistics for this year show the number of Chinese visitors this March totalled 17,940, almost double that of 2023 when 10,632 people came.
Recalibrating the relationship
When the country started relaxing rules in 2023, it began approving group tours again in phases, giving countries like Russia, Argentina and the U.S. “approved destination status.”
Canada was notably left out.
That is, until late 2025, marking a warming up of the bilateral relationship as Prime Minister Mark Carney worked to diversify Canada’s economy and shore up friends in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s punishing global tariffs.
At the time Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said there has been “work over the last number of months … to recalibrate the relationship” through visits to China, including Carney’s invite to meet President Xi Jinping in Beijing in January.
Utour Group is now seeing better business as a result of that push, even if the volume isn’t back to pre-pandemic levels.
“So far, the group tours [for the spring] are basically full,” said manager Li Mengran.
More flights, less red tape
In the months since Carney’s visit, officials have announced a number of tourism and travel-related commitments in addition to trade-related goals.
Tour operators in Canada and China are celebrating the continuing thawing of relations, and the subsequent boost in two-way tourism, after Beijing returned Canada to its list of approved travel destinations earlier this year.
The Chinese government waived the lengthy visa application process for Canadian and British passport holders for a stay of up to 30 days in February.
In April, Transport Canada announced an “incremental increase” to the number of direct flights permitted between Canada and China, up to 20 flights per week. The number of flights was drastically reduced as Canadian carriers were banned from flying through Russian airspace, though Chinese carriers were not.
As part of reinforcing soft power ties, Culture Minister Marc Miller met with China’s Culture and Tourism Minister Sun Yeli in Beijing this week.
The diplomatic efforts seem to have paid off for Canadian businesses.
Vancouver-based tour agency Laurus Travel Inc. told CBC News in an email the number of Canadian bookings for its China tours has “more than quadrupled” in the time period between late February to late May compared with the same period last year.
“We achieved this without any advertising. We expect the trend to accelerate in the months ahead,” wrote owner Julius Yan.
“There is simply no better evidence to show that China’s visa-free policy extended to Canadians in the wake of Carney’s Beijing trip is playing a key role in this.”
Canada’s tourism industry
The promise of more Chinese tourists in Canada is a lifeline for the industry that thrives on their dollars. Before the pandemic hit, they spent close to $2 billion a year here.
The push to bring in more visitors can be felt on the floor of the massive annual industry show, Rendez-vous Canada, which saw more than double the number of travel representatives from China compared with the previous year.
“[Chinese tourists] love to partake in local culture, cuisine, love to shop,” said Marsha Walden, CEO of the Crown corporation Destination Canada.
“When they come to Canada they spend their money in lots of different ways so it makes them very valuable to our industry.”
Walden says the organization projects revenue from these visitors will grow by almost 23 per cent this year from an estimated $1.15 billion in 2025, according to Statistics Canada.
While the volume of Canadian visitors headed to China may not carry the same amount of economic heft, there’s another reason the Chinese want more tourists from abroad.
With a new chapter in bilateral relations, and China’s desire to become a global power, utilizing the soft power of tourism could be seen as an effective tool in achieving those goals.
“We think tourists from different countries can come here to fully understand the country’s development,” said Utour Group manager Li.
