China going cheap for travellers with airfares as low as $246

One-way fares as low as $246 are available as airlines attempt to fill flights from China, but will anyone take up the offer?

The Great Wall of China is one of the country’s most famous landmarks and tourist attractions. Picture: Frederic J Brown

Amid the array of steep airfares being charged for overseas travel, there’s one route going very cheap.

In an effort to fill planes returning to China from Australia, one-way fares as low as $246 are on offer through momondo.com.au and under $400 with Webjet.

Travel company Trip-a-Deal which is majority owned by Qantas is even offering a ten-day tour deal including return flights and accommodation for $999 a person.

Although Qantas is yet to return to mainland China, Trip-a-Deal promises the flights are with a “full service airline” out of either Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide or Perth.

The extraordinary deals come as Chinese airlines increase capacity on Australian routes, thanks to strong demand from international students returning down under and the visiting friends and relatives market.

Tourists are also starting to come back in modest numbers, despite ongoing restrictions on Chinese tour groups due to China’s revocation of Australia’s approved destination status.

From January to February short-term arrivals from China more than doubled in number, and Sydney Airport noted a near 40 per cent recovery in the Chinese market in its March passenger data.

Filling aeroplanes heading in the other direction was proving a much greater challenge however, with the Bureau of Statistics showing China no longer ranked in Australians’ top ten countries for short-term overseas stays.

Prior to the pandemic, China was the sixth most visited country by travelling Australians after New Zealand, Indonesia, the US, India and Japan.

Australian Federation of Travel Agents chief executive Dean Long said China’s appeal as a tourist destination was gaining momentum before Covid hit but it would take a long time to rebuild that interest even at very low prices.

“In the end there’ll be those people who have a perceived higher level of risk tolerance and that price point will make those people want to travel there,” Mr Long said.

“Unfortunately with recent international events there’s a lot of other destinations people are putting ahead of China.”

For many Australians, those sought after destinations were in Europe and North America, while more budget conscious travellers headed to Bali or the Pacific Islands, he added.

“The cultural alignment between (Australia and China) hasn’t necessarily been there and as a result that aspiration to travel to China hasn’t been as strong,” Mr Long said.

“It’s very different when you look at Chinese people wanting to travel to Australia. There’s a huge level of aspiration and desire because of the way Tourism Australia has marketed us. It’s fair to say the Chinese National Tourism Office hasn’t had as much success in creating that desire and demand when compared to the UK, the European Union and North America.”

Author of Tourism Crises and Destination Recovery, David Beirman, said ongoing political tension between Australia and China meant the country was not high on travellers’ bucket lists.

“That’s having an impact of ‘would you rather go to a place where you feel welcome or a place where you feel you may not be welcome?’,” said Dr Beirman.

“If you’ve got family in China you’re going to see them come what may but if you don’t have that connection with the destination, you might think this is a place I will wait to visit.”

He said cheap $999 packages were “obviously designed to encourage people to take that risk”.

“There probably is a lot of hesitancy, even to travel through China on the way to another destination,” Dr Beirman said.

“There’s a lot of places competing for the stopover market. You’ve got the Middle East destinations and the southeast Asian destinations of Singapore, Bangkok and Hong Kong.

“They’re all trying to compete for that market so China would probably be very much on the second or third run of that field at the moment.”