QINGDAO -- China's inbound cruise tourism sector has continued to enjoy rapid growth in the first quarter of 2025, spurred by a visa-free policy for foreign tour groups arriving by cruise ships which is seeing more and more international visitors pay visits to the country.
The policy, introduced last May, allows visa-free entry for foreign tourist groups arriving on cruise ships at all of the country's 13 cruise ports along the coastline.

The tourism sector in general was given a further boost in November, when China extended its visa-free transit policy to allow ordinary passport holders from 38 countries, including the Republic of Korea (ROK) and Japan, to visit for a maximum of 30 days without applying for a visa.

This was followed by another a significant relaxation of the visa-free transit policy in December, when Chinese authorities extended the permitted stay for eligible foreign travelers to 240 hours from the previous periods of either 72 or 144 hours.

These visa relaxations have also boosted inbound tourism to east China's Shandong Province, where cruise travel has become particularly popular among South Korean visitors crossing the Yellow Sea.

According to Shandong's border inspection station, the overall number of visa-free entries by South Korean travelers hit 84,000 in the first quarter, accounting for over 83 percent of all foreign visa-free arrivals, highlighting the effectiveness of the policy.

Meanwhile, the appetite for cruises driven by the current favorable policies is such that Shandong's Qingdao City recently saw its busiest ever day in terms of passenger flow when China's first domestically built large cruise ship, the Adora Magic City, arrived at the port for the first time.
"On the night of April 10, the 'Adora Magic City' cruise ship departed from Qingdao with over 6,400 passengers and crew on board, heading for Japan's Fukuoka, and Jeju Island in South Korea. Combined with that day's inbound flow, the Qingdao International Cruise Terminal surpassed 10,000 inbound and outbound passenger movements in a single day for the first time since its opening in 2015," said Chen Xiao, head of the border inspection department of the Qingdao border inspection station in the province.