What is Approved Destination Status?

According to various literature on Approved Destination Status (ADS), it is a special policy China has adopted for its outbound tourism.

ADS agreement is a bilateral tourism agreement whereby Chinese government allows Chinese tour operators to organize tours to the counterpart country while the counterpart government allows Chinese tourists to travel into its territory with a special group ADS visa. Only countries with ADS can be listed as group travel destinations for Chinese tourists and promote their destinations in China.

China recognised early on its population creates a huge opportunity for the outbound tourism industry. Chinese outbound tourism started in the early 1980’s when residents of Guangdong province could visit Hong Kong and Macau, provided their relatives in those two cities could cover their expenses. During that period, the application for obtaining a passport was very complicated. An applicant needed to show invitation letters from overseas relatives indicating the expense source, a company letter indicating the permission of the trip, and purchase several official stamps from different government agencies before submitting it to the official corresponding passport office, which was a sub-department of the Police Bureau.

In 1988, Thailand joined Hong Kong and Macau to share the privileges to obtain Chinese visitors, followed by Singapore and Malaysia in 1990, and later Philippines in 1992. However, the visits were limited to business travel and visiting friends and relatives.

It was not until 1997, that the “Provisional measures concerning the administration of outbound travel of Chinese citizens at their own expenses” was promulgated and approved by the Chinese Government State Council, thus announcing the official start of the outbound travel by Chinese citizens Since 1999, citizens can apply for passports with their personal identifications, which is a significant step to ease the outbound traveling restriction. As can be noted, China is gradually relaxing its controls on the outbound market.

Australia and New Zealand obtained ADS status in 1999; Japan in 2000, and 26 EU countries in 2004. In January 2005, United Kingdom was approved.

With the ease of the passport restriction policy and the expansion of more destination choices, Chinese outbound tourism has skyrocketed since 1998, after steadily been increasing for the past ten years. This growth has drawn worldwide attention. Countries are now making great efforts to attract Chinese visitors, an enormous potential market with almost one fifth of the world population.