Beijing announced on Nov. 4, 2025 that it would resume group tourism to Canada beginning the following Monday, a move that prompted celebration among travel agents in British Columbia and raised hopes for a broader recovery in Chinese visitation to the province and the country.
The resumption restores a travel channel that was effectively closed at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when organized group tours from China were halted. For decades before the pandemic, travel agents in British Columbia had developed established itineraries for Chinese groups and a steady flow of arrivals that supported hotels, attractions and restaurants across the province and beyond. Industry veterans said the typical trip in the past involved extended stays and substantial local spending.
Glynnis Chan, president at Happy Times Travel and Tour Ltd., has led Chinese group tours for more than forty years and represents a generation of agents who built their businesses around those multiday, multiweek itineraries. Tourists generally spent about six weeks in Canada on those packages and, according to industry figures cited by local agents, paid more than $1,300 a day. Popular stops included Stanley Park in Vancouver, the Rocky Mountains and Parliament Hill in Ottawa, reflecting a mix of urban, nature and national landmarks that had long appealed to organized groups.
The decision to allow groups again comes after high-level meetings in Beijing that took place days after a meeting in China between Mark Carney and President Xi Jinping. Canadian officials and industry groups framed the timing as part of a diplomatic and economic context that could help revive two-way travel, though they have emphasized that concrete recovery will depend on bookings and arrivals in the weeks ahead. British Columbia travel agents publicly marked the announcement with relief and optimism, saying it would allow them to once again market group itineraries that had been dormant for five years.
Officials and tourism organizations have pointed to data suggesting a partial rebound even before the most recent announcement. Destination BC reported that Chinese travel to the province remains down 45 per cent compared with the pre-pandemic baseline of 2019 but is up 24 per cent compared with last year. Those figures have been cited by provincial and local industry stakeholders as evidence that demand is returning but that full recovery will take time and continued facilitation of travel services and capacity.
Owners and operators in Richmond and Vancouver described the practical implications of reopening: tour operators will be able to re-establish longer itineraries and revive services that were scaled back or suspended after 2020. Mabel Wu, owner of Next Vacation Ltd. in Richmond, B.C., recalled the "glory times" when groups arriving from China would order large regional seafood items such as king crabs and live lobsters, a pattern of spending that had been a boon to certain restaurants and retailers.
The restart of group tourism is expected to have ripple effects beyond front-line travel agents, affecting hotels, tour operators, transportation providers and cultural attractions that depend on group business cycles. Destination BC's statistics suggest that while visitation has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels, the upward trend from last year could accelerate if group bookings materialize and logistical arrangements—such as flight capacity and ground operations—scale up in time.
Industry observers said the coming weeks will be closely watched for concrete indicators: the number of booked departures, arrivals at major airports, occupancy at hotels commonly used by tour groups, and spending patterns in cities and regions that historically hosted Chinese groups. Government and industry sources have indicated they will monitor those metrics to assess whether the resumption leads to sustained traffic or a more modest uptick.