Impacted by the global financial crisis, in November 2008 Beijing only welcomed 311,000 inbound tourists, a decrease of 20.6% from the same period of last year, and 6.2% more than the decrease of previous month.

The data has been jointly published by the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics and the Beijing Survey Team under the National Bureau of Statistics of China.

The data indicated that in November 2008, Beijing received a total of 273,000 overseas tourists, decreasing by 22% from a year before; the number of tourists from Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan was 38,000, down by 9.3% over the previous year. The number of tourists from main source markets all went down to different degrees. Of these, Beijing hosted 43,000 tourists from the United States, a decrease of 23%; 33,000 from Japan, down by 36.9%; 24,000 from South Korea, a decrease of 35.5% year-on-year.

The number of tourists from each continental source market all decreased from the previous year: those from the North American market went down by 18.6%; 38.4% for Africa, 15.2% for Europe, 30.7% for Oceania, and 28.1% for Asia.

From January to November, Beijing received a total of 3.57 million inbound tourists, a decrease of 12.1% from the previous year. Of these, 400,000 were from Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, down by 18.6%; and 3.17 million from overseas markets, a decrease of 11.2%.

(China Hospitality News December 24, 2008)